Debt Avalanche Calculator
See how fast you'll be debt-free, and how much interest you'll save, by paying off your highest interest rate first.
How the calculation works
The avalanche method targets your highest interest rate first regardless of balance size, which minimizes the total interest you pay over the life of all your debts, the mathematically optimal order. Once a debt hits zero, its minimum payment rolls into the extra payment being thrown at the next-highest-rate debt. It usually takes longer to see a debt fully disappear than the snowball method (which targets the smallest balance first), since a high-rate debt can also have a large balance.
Formula
Each month, every debt accrues interest and gets its minimum payment. All extra money, your extra payment plus the minimum payments freed up from already-paid-off debts, goes to the debt with the highest interest rate.
Examples
$5,000 @ 22%, $3,000 @ 18%, $8,000 @ 15%, $200 extra/month
Debt-free in 42 months, $5,101.75 total interest paid
$2,000 @ 10% and $6,000 @ 25%, $100 extra/month
Debt-free in 37 months, $2,810.79 total interest paid