Debt Payoff Calculator — Snowball vs Avalanche

Real-world use cases

• Crush two credit cards without quitting halfway

  You carry $4,200 on a 22.9% Visa and $1,500 on an 18.5% Mastercard, paying $145 in combined minimums. You can find $200 more a month. Snowball clears the Mastercard first so you feel a real win in a few months; that freed-up $40 minimum then rolls onto the Visa. Avalanche hits the Visa first to shave more interest. Run both, look at the interest gap, and pick the one you will actually stick with — the plan you finish beats the optimal plan you abandon.

• Decide whether to attack the student loan or the store card

  A $18,000 student loan at 6.5% and a $2,300 store card at 26.99% feel like they should be paid in size order — knock out the big one. The avalanche view shows the opposite: every month the store card costs ~$52 in interest versus the loan's ~$98 on six times the balance. Killing the 27% card first frees the most expensive money fastest. The tool puts the store card at the top of the payoff order and shows the dollars saved.

• Find the extra payment that gets you debt-free before a deadline

  You want to be debt-free before a wedding 30 months out. Type your debts, then nudge the extra payment up until the debt-free date drops under 30 months. Because freed minimums roll forward, the last few hundred dollars of extra often shave off far more than the first few hundred — the tool shows exactly where that leverage kicks in for your specific mix.

• Sanity-check a debt consolidation offer

  A lender offers to roll three cards into one personal loan. Model your current cards here to get the honest payoff date and total interest, then compare that number against the consolidation loan's total cost. If the loan's total interest is higher than your avalanche plan's, the "lower monthly payment" is just stretching the debt — and now you can prove it.

• Show a partner the real cost of minimum-only payments

  Arguments about money go better with a chart. Enter the household debts with $0 extra and the timeline barely slopes down; the tool may even flag a stall on the worst card. Add a realistic extra payment and watch the curve steepen and the debt-free date jump years closer. Copy the summary and put the two scenarios side by side.

Common pitfalls

• Entering the minimum payment as a percentage instead of a dollar amount. Card statements often show the minimum as "2% of balance" — convert it to actual dollars (e.g. 2% of $5,000 = $100) before typing, or the simulation will pay almost nothing each month.

• Forgetting that the extra payment rolls forward. People add an extra payment, see one debt clear, and assume the freed minimum is "saved." It is not — this tool automatically rolls it onto the next debt, which is the whole engine of both methods. Plan your budget assuming that money stays in the payoff, not back in your wallet.

• Picking snowball or avalanche on vibes instead of the interest gap. If avalanche only saves a small amount, snowball's motivation is worth more than the difference. If avalanche saves thousands, the math should win. Always read the "avalanche saves" line before deciding, rather than defaulting to whichever you heard about first.

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