List your debts, pick a strategy, and see your exact debt-free date and how much interest an extra payment saves.
| Order | Debt | Balance | Rate | Paid off in |
|---|
With your extra payment applied.
The avalanche method directs every extra dollar to the highest-interest debt first, which is mathematically optimal — it minimizes total interest paid over the life of all your debts. The snowball method targets the smallest balance first instead, which usually costs a little more in interest but clears individual debts faster, which some people find easier to stick with.
Each month, every debt accrues interest on its remaining balance, minimum payments are applied to all debts, and any extra payment is funneled entirely to the debt at the top of your chosen order — once that debt is cleared, its minimum payment joins the extra pool too, which is why payoff accelerates over time.
For most realistic debt loads the gap between avalanche and snowball is measured in weeks and a modest amount of interest, not months or thousands of dollars — the real driver of a faster debt-free date is the size of the extra payment itself.
Avalanche saves more in interest overall; snowball tends to produce faster visible wins by clearing small debts quickly. If you're confident you'll stick with a plan either way, avalanche is the mathematically better choice.
It gets added to the extra-payment pool for the remaining debts, which is why payoff speed increases the further along you get — this is modeled automatically in the table above.
Yes — use 'Add another debt' to include as many as you need; the payoff order and totals recalculate automatically.