Debt payoff calculator
Snowball and avalanche often cost the same. On a $5,000 card at 22% and a $12,000 loan at 6% with $600 a month, both orders clear the debt in 32 months and pay $2,080 in interest — because the smallest balance is also the dearest one. The two only diverge when they disagree about which debt goes first, and the page prices that disagreement rather than arguing about it.
Your debts, both payoff orders, simulated month by month — so the argument between snowball and avalanche becomes a price rather than a preference.
Every simulated plan reconciles principal plus interest · How we check
| Debt | Balance | Rate % | Minimum |
|---|---|---|---|
Debt free in
2y 1m
Highest rate first, on $800.00 a month — $2,166.69 of interest along the way. Paying only the minimums would take 3y 6m.
What the comfortable order costs
| Method | Time | Interest | Clears first |
|---|---|---|---|
| Avalanche — highest rate first | 2y 1m | $2,166.69 | Credit card |
| Snowball — smallest balance first | 2y 1m | $2,166.69 | Credit card |
On these debts the two orders cost within a dollar of each other — the argument is academic here, so pick whichever you will actually stick to.
The order they clear, highest rate first
- Month 5: Credit card — $64.35 of interest paid on it
- Month 20: Store card — $1,317.51 of interest paid on it
- Month 25: Car loan — $784.83 of interest paid on it
Each time one clears, its whole payment rolls onto the next. That rolling is what makes either method beat paying minimums, and it is where the name snowball comes from.
The argument, and what it is worth
Avalanche is optimal. That is not in dispute and it does not need defending: paying the most expensive money first always costs less. The interesting question is how much less, and on ordinary consumer debts the answer is frequently a few hundred dollars over several years — small enough that a method someone finishes beats a better method they abandon.
It is not always small. Put a 29% card next to a 4% student loan and the gap widens sharply, because every month spent on the cheap debt is a month the expensive one keeps compounding. The figure above tells you which situation you are in, which is the only thing that settles the question.
Questions people actually ask
- What is the difference between snowball and avalanche?
- The order. Avalanche clears the highest interest rate first and always costs the least — that is arithmetic, not opinion. Snowball clears the smallest balance first, so an account disappears sooner and the list gets shorter faster. The interest difference between them is what this page computes, because it is usually the missing number in the argument.
- Which one should I use?
- Avalanche if the gap is large, snowball if it is small and the momentum helps. On typical consumer debts the difference is often a few hundred dollars across several years, which is a price worth paying for a method you will actually finish. Where one debt is far more expensive than the rest, the gap grows and the arithmetic starts to win the argument.
- Why does clearing one debt speed everything up?
- Because its payment does not disappear — it rolls onto the next debt. That is the snowball, and both methods use it. It is also why paying minimums forever is so much slower: nothing ever rolls, and the payment on a card falls as the balance does, which stretches the term enormously.
- What if the minimum does not cover the interest?
- Then the balance grows and the plan never ends, which this page reports as "never" rather than as a very large number. It happens on high-rate cards with a percentage-of-balance minimum, and it is the point at which the problem stops being about payoff order and becomes about the rate itself — a balance transfer, a consolidation loan, or a hardship arrangement.
- Does consolidation help?
- Only if the new rate is genuinely lower and the term is not longer. A consolidation loan that halves the rate and doubles the term can cost more in total while feeling cheaper every month. Run the current debts here, then run the consolidated balance as a single debt at the new rate and term, and compare the interest lines.