Get out of debt, on a plan.

The rolling payment is what makes either one work

You pay the minimum on everything, then send every spare dollar at one target debt. When that debt clears, its minimum does not go back into your budget. It rolls onto the next target, so the amount attacking your debt grows each time one falls, which is where the snowball image comes from.

This is the part that does the heavy lifting, and it is identical in both methods. If you take nothing else from this page: keep paying the same total every month even as individual debts disappear.

Avalanche is cheaper. Snowball is faster to feel.

Avalanche targets the highest interest rate first, which is mathematically optimal because it kills the most expensive debt while it is still large. On the example loaded here it costs $2,403 in interest and finishes in 2 years 7 months.

Snowball targets the smallest balance first. On the same debts it costs $3,131 and takes 2 years 8 months, so avalanche saves $728 and a month. But look at when the first debt disappears: 9 months under snowball against 18 months under avalanche. You get your first win in half the time.

Which one is actually better for you

Avalanche wins on arithmetic every time, and the gap grows when your rates are far apart. If your debts run from 4% to 29%, the highest-rate debt is doing so much damage that attacking anything else first is expensive.

Snowball wins when the risk is that you stop. A plan you abandon in month four is worse than a slightly costlier plan you finish, and clearing a debt outright is a much stronger signal of progress than watching one large balance inch down. The honest framing is that $728 is the price of the motivation. If the rates are close, that is a reasonable trade. If one card is at 29%, it is not.

What this calculator leaves out

It assumes fixed rates, fixed minimums, and that you add no new debt. In reality credit card minimums shrink as the balance falls, which stretches the payoff longer than a fixed minimum suggests, and a single new purchase on a card you are trying to clear resets much of the progress.

It also cannot see the options that sit outside the math: a balance transfer at 0%, a consolidation loan, an employer match you should not be skipping, or a hardship program. If your highest rate is above roughly 25%, clearing it usually beats almost any investment, and the budget builder is the better first stop for finding the extra payment in the first place.

Unfamiliar term? The course glossary defines the fifty this site actually uses, in the sense this site uses them.