Cleared in
3y 10m (46 months)
A credit card has no term. That single fact is why minimum payments can last longer than the car you bought with the card. Enter your balance and your card's rate to see how long repayment actually takes, and what a fixed extra amount does to it.
The minimum payment is modelled as a percentage of the statement balance, subject to a fixed dollar floor, recomputed every month as the balance falls. Issuers differ: some use 1% of principal plus that month's interest, which repays faster, and some use a flat percentage of the whole balance, which repays more slowly. Read the minimum on your own statement and set the two fields to match — the difference between those rules is worth years.
| Plan | Time to clear | Total interest |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum only | 55y 3m | $27,388 |
| Minimum + $50 | 7y 1m | $3,746 |
| Minimum + $100 | 3y 10m | $2,045 |
| Fixed 3% of balance | 4y 3m | $2,557 |
| Fixed 5% of balance | 2y 1m | $1,203 |
A mortgage or a car loan has a term. The payment is calculated in advance so that the balance reaches zero on a known date, and as long as you make that payment the loan ends on schedule. A credit card works the other way round: there is no agreed term, and the payment is recalculated every month as a percentage of whatever the balance happens to be.
That design has a consequence which is easy to state and hard to feel. When the balance falls, the minimum payment falls with it, which means the amount going to principal shrinks at exactly the moment you would want it to grow. The payment chases the balance down instead of eliminating it.
Run the arithmetic on a $5,000 balance at 20.94%, which is the Federal Reserve's reported average for credit card accounts in the second quarter of 2026. Monthly interest is $87.25. A 2% minimum is $100. The principal repaid in month one is $12.75, or a quarter of one percent of what you owe. Everything that follows from that single comparison.
The table in the calculator prices five different repayment strategies against the same $5,000 balance at 20.94%. Reading it across is the fastest way to understand why the minimum payment is the most expensive option available on a credit card.
| Plan | Time to clear | Total interest | Interest as a share of the balance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum only (2% of balance, $25 floor) | 663 months | $27,388.20 | 5.48× |
| Minimum + $50 | 85 months | $3,745.56 | 0.75× |
| Minimum + $100 | 46 months | $2,044.54 | 0.41× |
| Fixed 3% of the original balance | 51 months | $2,556.68 | 0.51× |
| Fixed 5% of the original balance | 25 months | $1,203.48 | 0.24× |
On minimums alone the balance takes 663 months, which is 55 years and 3 months, and the interest totals $27,388.20 — more than five times the amount originally borrowed. Adding $100 a month turns 55 years into 3 years and 10 months and cuts the interest by 92.5%. The extra money paid over those 46 months is about $4,600. It removes roughly $25,300 of interest.
The fixed-percentage rows are worth noticing because they are the cheapest structural change available and they cost nothing to set up. Paying a constant 5% of the original balance every month — $250 on a $5,000 debt, a figure that never declines — clears the balance in 25 months. The mechanism is the whole point: by fixing the payment rather than tying it to the balance, the amount going to principal rises in absolute terms every month instead of falling.
If you hold more than one balance, the ordering question has a definite answer in arithmetic and a more complicated answer in practice. Ordering by rate — paying the highest-APR balance first while making minimums on the rest — minimises total interest, and it is the mathematically correct strategy. Ordering by smallest balance first often costs more in interest, but it produces a cleared account sooner, and clearing an account is what keeps people going.
This page models one balance at a time, so the ordering choice sits outside it. What it can do is price the decision. Run your highest-rate balance through this calculator at minimum plus your available extra, then rerun it with that extra applied to a different balance, and compare the interest totals. The difference is what the ordering choice is worth to you in money, which is the right way to weigh it against the motivational argument.
There is also an option that does not appear in any of the tables here because it is not arithmetic: a balance transfer to a lower promotional rate, or a consolidation loan at a lower fixed rate. Both can reduce the interest substantially, and both have their own costs — transfer fees, promotional periods that expire into a higher rate, and the risk of running the cleared card back up. Those are terms a lender sets, and this tool does not model them. What it does provide is the baseline to compare against, which is the honest first step in evaluating any such offer.
On a $5,000 balance at 20.94% with a 2% minimum payment and a $25 floor, 663 months — just over 55 years — and $27,388.20 of interest. The reason is that a 2% minimum barely exceeds the monthly interest charge: $100 against $87.25 of interest in the first month, leaving $12.75 against the balance. Change the minimum percentage on the page to whatever your own statement shows and the answer will change, sometimes by decades.
On the default figures it takes the payoff from 663 months to 46, and the interest from $27,388.20 to $2,044.54. The extra money totals roughly $4,600 across those 46 months, so it removes about $25,300 of interest. That ratio is not a trick of the numbers: every extra dollar reduces the balance, and the reduced balance lowers the minimum payment and the interest charge in every following month.
A fixed amount, and the gap is large. Paying a constant 5% of the original balance clears the same $5,000 in 25 months; paying 5% of the current balance would take considerably longer, because the payment falls as the balance falls. The cheapest thing you can change about a credit card repayment is to stop letting the payment shrink. Set a fixed amount and keep it fixed until the balance is gone.
Compare the rates and the answer is usually clear-cut, because a card at 20.94% charges far more than any insured deposit account pays — the FDIC national savings rate was 0.37% in September 2026. Clearing the card is the better return by a wide margin. The exception is an emergency reserve: without accessible cash, unexpected costs go back onto the card, and the cycle restarts. Building a small buffer first and then attacking the balance is a defensible order of operations even though it is slower on paper.
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Cluster us/loans · Unit us-credit-card-payoff-calculator · Engine revolving-debt / payoff · Method: Interest accrues monthly on the outstanding balance; the minimum payment is the greater of a percentage of the statement balance and a fixed floor, recomputed every month, with any extra amount added on top.