Snowball vs. Avalanche, Without the Sales Pitch
Most calculators are built by someone who has already decided which method you should use. This one shows both, including the part each side leaves out.
Snowball smallest balance first
Avalanche highest rate first
How to read this
Avalanche — the disciplined one
- Targets your highest interest rate first
- Always the cheaper method on paper
- The first balance to disappear may be a long way off
- Pays you at the end, in interest you never see leave
Snowball — the motivating one
- Targets your smallest balance first
- Usually costs a bit more in interest
- Clears a whole debt early, sometimes within weeks
- Pays you now, in progress you can see
That is the real difference between them, and it is not a mathematical one. The avalanche asks you to keep sending money for months before anything on the list disappears, and rewards you at the finish. The snowball hands you a balance at zero while you still remember starting, and charges you a little interest for it.
Which matters more is a question about you, not about your debts. The most common point of failure in a payoff plan is the stretch where nothing visibly changes, so if there is a small balance you could clear in six weeks, the snowball buys momentum cheaply. If the gap between your interest rates is wide, that momentum gets expensive, and the arithmetic deserves the louder vote.
A plan you follow beats a plan that's optimal — but you should know which one you're choosing.
What this doesn't do
One thing this tool assumes: your minimum payments stay level and you don't add new debt. Credit card minimums usually shrink as the balance falls, which makes real-world payoff slightly slower than any calculator shows.