Tool · Money
List your debts with their balances, rates and minimum payments, add whatever extra you can put toward them each month, and the calculator runs the payoff two ways — smallest balance first and highest rate first — beside what happens if you only ever pay the minimums.
Where does each number come from?
- Each debt: what kind, balance, rate, minimum payment
- Picking the kind fills in an average rate for that kind of debt as a placeholder; your statement has the real one, and it’s the number to type over the placeholder. Balance and minimum payment are on the same statement. If a minimum payment doesn’t cover the month’s interest, the calculator says so, because that debt would grow rather than shrink.
- Extra each month
- Money on top of all the minimums, put toward one debt at a time. Whichever debt it targets is the only thing the two orders disagree about.
- A name for each debt
- Optional, and useful when you’ve got two cards.
What moves the answer?
Let’s say you’ve got a $6,000 card at 22% with a $150 minimum, a $1,500 medical bill at 0% with a $50 minimum, and an $8,000 car loan at 7% with a $250 payment, and you can find $200 a month extra.
Paying only the minimums, the last debt closes in about three years and nine months and you pay about $4,600 in interest. With the $200 extra, both orders finish in about two years and four months — the same month — because the total money going in is the same either way. The difference is in the interest and in when the first debt disappears. Smallest balance first clears the medical bill in six months and costs about $2,450 in interest. Highest rate first goes after the card, clears nothing until month twenty-one, and costs about $2,050. The rate order saves about $400 over the run; the balance order gives you a closed account fifteen months sooner.
Which of those matters more is the whole question, and the piece on the two orders takes it on. The calculator’s job is to show you both numbers for your own debts, since the size of the gap depends on how far apart your rates are and how small your smallest balance is.
What does the calculator take as given?
- The placeholder rates
- All come from the Federal Reserve’s consumer credit release of 8 September 2026, for the second quarter of 2026: credit cards, 22.15% (the average on accounts that were charged interest); new-car loans at a bank, 7.14% over sixty months; personal loans at a bank, 11.86% over twenty-four months. For federal student loans the placeholder is 6.52%, the fixed rate on new undergraduate Direct Loans for the 2026–27 year, from the Department of Education’s announcement of 4 June 2026. A private student loan has its own rate on its statement. “Other” starts empty.
- How the money moves
- Every debt gets its minimum every month. The extra, plus the minimum of any debt that’s already closed, goes to the target debt. Interest is figured monthly at the yearly rate divided by twelve.
- Minimums held flat
- A card’s real minimum falls as the balance falls; the calculator keeps the one you typed, which is close to what happens if you keep paying what you paid this month.
- What's left out
- New charges. Fees. Promotional 0% periods and balance transfers. Income-driven repayment and forgiveness programs on federal student loans, which change what “minimum” means and are described at studentaid.gov. Your mortgage, unless you add it — it usually has the lowest rate and the largest balance, so it lands last in both orders.
The card, the medical bill and the car loan are three made-up debts to show where the two orders split; your own statements carry the three numbers each debt needs, and the extra is the only figure on the page that's yours to choose.
Sources
- Federal Reserve, Statistical Release G.19, Consumer Credit, Terms of Credit table — release of 8 September 2026, second quarter 2026: credit card plans, accounts assessed interest, 22.15%; commercial bank new-car loans, 60-month, 7.14%; commercial bank personal loans, 24-month, 11.86%.
- Federal Student Aid, U.S. Department of Education, Electronic Announcement GENERAL-26-33, 4 June 2026 — Direct Subsidized and Unsubsidized Loans for undergraduates first disbursed 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027: 6.52%.
- Bills & Beans, Debt Avalanche vs. Snowball — the piece on the two orders.