Debt Payoff Calculator

Takes all your debts at once and shows you what happens when you attack them — and in what order.

Inputs

Debts — add each one with its balance, rate, and payment. You need at least one; the calculator will tell you if you haven't added any.

Extra Monthly Payment — the amount above your minimums you can put toward debt.

Strategy — Avalanche or Snowball.

Avalanche vs Snowball

The two classic approaches. Both pay minimums on everything and direct the extra payment at one target; they differ on which target.

Avalanche attacks the highest interest rate first. This is mathematically optimal — it always costs less and finishes sooner. Sometimes by a lot.

Snowball attacks the smallest balance first. It costs more, but it clears individual debts faster, and each one that disappears is a visible win.

Which to use

The honest answer is that it depends on you, not on the arithmetic.

Avalanche if you're motivated by the numbers and won't lose steam grinding away at a large balance for a year without visible progress.

Snowball if you've abandoned debt payoff attempts before. The research on this is genuinely mixed, but the pattern is consistent: people stick with snowball more often, and a strategy you finish beats an optimal one you quit.

Run both. The toggle exists so you can see the actual gap — if avalanche saves you four months and $600, that's a real but survivable cost for a strategy you'll keep. If it saves you two years and $9,000, that's harder to justify.

The rolling effect

Both strategies do the same thing when a debt clears: its payment gets added to the attack on the next one.

That's why payoff accelerates. Your first debt takes a while; by the last one you're throwing every payment you were previously making at a single balance. The compounding here is the reason a payoff plan speeds up rather than plodding along at a constant rate.

Test extra payment amounts

The most useful thing you can do here is run it several times at different extra amounts.

The relationship isn't linear — a modest increase often removes a disproportionate amount of time, because it clears an early debt sooner and starts the rolling effect earlier. Finding the point where an extra $40 buys you eight months is worth a few minutes.

Add To Budget

Add To Budget pushes your debts into the Budget Builder, confirming with Debt(s) added to budget and a Go To Budget shortcut.

Worth doing. The calculator shows what happens with an extra payment you've assumed you can make; the Builder works out what extra payment your actual income and expenses support, and sequences across everything at once. It's the same question answered with more information.

See Debts and Understanding Your Results.

Considering consolidation?

If you're thinking about combining these into one loan, check it first with Debt Consolidation.