How long until this debt is gone?

Compounding, pointed at you

Compounding is the idea this whole site is built around: a balance that grows by a percentage of itself, so growth adds to growth. That is wonderful when the balance is money you invested. It is the opposite of wonderful when the balance is a credit card, because the arithmetic does not care which direction it is pointed.

A card charging 22% a year adds roughly 1.8% to whatever you owe every single month, before your payment is even applied. Pay less than that charge and the balance does not sit still while you catch up — it grows, the same way an investment would at the same rate. This calculator exists to show that growth in the same terms the rest of the site uses for the version people find encouraging.

Why the minimum payment barely moves the number

Card issuers typically set a minimum payment around 1–3% of the balance, which on a lot of everyday balances sits close to the interest charge itself. Pay only that and almost the entire payment goes to interest — the same front-loaded pattern a mortgage shows, just faster and at a much higher rate. The fix in the arithmetic is not complicated: pay more than the interest charge, and the gap between payment and charge is what actually reduces what you owe.

Try it above — drop the monthly payment low enough and the headline changes from a number of years to “it never clears”. That is not a bug in the tool. It is the actual mechanism behind balances that seem to never go down no matter how long someone has been paying.

What paying extra is really worth

Because interest is charged on the whole outstanding balance, every extra unit paid today stops being charged interest for the rest of the payoff — not just once, but every month until the balance is gone. That is why a fairly small increase in the monthly payment often cuts the payoff time by a much larger fraction: the saving compounds in your favour the same way the balance was compounding against you.

What this deliberately leaves out

• Multiple debts. This tool prices one balance at one rate. Choosing which of several debts to attack first is a real question with two common answers — highest rate first, or smallest balance first — and this site does not tell you which to pick.
• New spending. The balance here only ever falls (or grows from interest) — it does not model further purchases added to the card.
• Fees, penalty rates and promotional periods. Late fees, balance-transfer offers and rate changes after an introductory period are not modelled. Use the rate you actually expect to pay.
• Whether to pay this down or invest instead. That comparison is genuinely the honest framing of the question, and the growth calculator can price the investing side using this rate as the assumed return — but which is right depends on certainty, tax position and temperament, none of which this site knows about you.

Not advice. This tool applies arithmetic to assumptions you entered. It does not know your circumstances, your tax position or your goals, and it is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold anything. Past returns do not predict future ones, and no figure here is a forecast.