Credit Card Payoff Time Calculator

Because most issuer minimums are about 2% of the balance or a $25 floor, and on a high-APR card the bulk of that payment is interest, not principal. On a $5,000 balance at 24% APR with a 2% / $25 minimum, monthly interest is $100 and the minimum is also $100, so the balance never shrinks at all. Even at a more typical 18% APR, paying only the minimum runs roughly 23 years and stacks on more than $5,000 in interest. Switching to a fixed monthly payment a few times the minimum is what turns a 20-year plan into a 2-year plan.

Avalanche (pay highest APR first) saves the most interest on paper. Snowball (pay smallest balance first) usually wins in real life, because clearing a debt in two or three months delivers a visible win that keeps you on the plan. If you have abandoned a payoff plan before, take snowball. If you treat this like accounting and your motivation is steady, take avalanche. This calculator runs a single card, so the choice mostly affects what payment you set here vs other cards. Both methods beat paying only the minimum by a wide margin.

When your balance is above roughly $5,000, your APR is north of 18%, and your FICO score is at least 690 so you qualify for a 15 to 21 month 0% promo card. Even with the standard 3% transfer fee, the interest you avoid during the promo window typically saves hundreds to thousands of dollars. The catch: you need a real plan to pay the balance off before the promo ends, otherwise the deferred interest or the new card's regular APR resets the trap. The calculator surfaces this recommendation automatically when the math is favorable.

A debt spiral is the moment your monthly payment is smaller than the monthly interest charge. The unpaid interest gets added to the balance, which then accrues more interest the next month, which raises the next minimum, and the balance climbs even as you pay every month. The calculator flags this with a 'debt spiral risk' warning when your first month's payment is below your first month's interest. The fix is to raise the payment, lower the APR (balance transfer, hardship program, or calling the issuer), or both at once.

The Rule of 72 estimates the doubling time of a compounding rate: 72 divided by the rate equals the years to double. Applied to a credit card balance that is not being paid down, a 24% APR doubles the unpaid debt in roughly 3 years (72 / 24). At 18% APR it doubles in 4 years; at 29% APR it doubles in about 2.5 years. That is why even small balances quietly become large ones once a card is left unpaid. Any payment that beats the monthly interest charge breaks the doubling clock, which is why this calculator's headline number is months to payoff under a strategy that actually shrinks the balance.