The minimum payment
can be a 19-year trap.
Drop in your balance and APRAnnual Percentage Rate (APR)The yearly cost of borrowing money, shown as a percentage.Full definition. Move the extra-payment slider. Watch the balance-over-time chart split into two lines. This tool makes visceral what the math has always said: paying only the minimum is the single most expensive financial habit in American personal finance.
The question it answersHow much faster can extra payments pay off a credit card?
Privacy: runs in your browser. What you enter stays on your device unless you copy a share link, which puts your inputs in the link.
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A common issuer formula: monthly interest plus 1 to 2% of current balance (floored at $25). Your card agreement sets the real one.
Math on your inputs. A lender’s actual terms, fees and rounding can differ from this result.
Credit card issuers structure minimum payments around 1 to 3% of balance, with a floor around $25. The math: as you pay down the balance, the minimum also drops, which drops the principal component, which extends the payoff timeline. A $5,000 balance at 22% APR paying only a minimum of interest plus 1% (this tool's default) takes about 19 years and costs about $8,100 in interest, more than 1.6 times the original balance. Any extra payment attacks principal and breaks the compounding loop in your favor.
What this tool assumes
- Interest accrues monthly at APR/12; fees and late charges are not modeled.
- Minimum payment = interest plus the percentage you enter of the current balance, floored at $25. At the defaults ($5,000, 22%, 1%) that takes 19 years 2 months. Your card agreement sets the real formula.
- The extra payment is added every month on top of the shrinking minimum. New purchases, fees, and penalty or promotional rates are not modeled.
- The simulation stops at 600 months (50 years).
Not financial advice. Simulation caps at 600 months (50 years) to prevent runaway loops. Minimum is interest plus the % of current balance you enter, floored at $25.
HOW THIS IS CALCULATED
This tool runs entirely in your browser: no data is sent to any server.
- Monthly interest = balance × APR ÷ 12. A blank APR is read as 22%; an entered 0 is used as 0%. A negative entry in any field is read as 0, and a note under the Calculate button says so. A blank or $0 balance shows no payoff timeline.
- Minimum payment = that month's interest + the percentage you enter (default 1%; a blank field is read as 1%, and an entered 0 means interest only) × balance, with a $25 floor. The "with extra" scenario pays the minimum plus the slider amount every month, so its payment also shrinks as the balance falls.
- Principal paid = payment − interest; the final payment is capped at balance + interest. The loop repeats until the balance is one cent or less or 600 months (50 years) pass, which shows as "50+ yrs". If the minimum-only path hits that cap, the tool reports no months-faster figure. If the extra payment does clear the balance, the saving shows as "More than" the difference in interest over those 50 years; if neither path clears it, the saving shown is the difference in interest over the 50 years only.
- Money saved = total interest paying minimums only − total interest with the extra payment, each rounded to the dollar first so the three figures shown add up. The note gives the payoff time saved in years and months; if the extra payment does not shorten the payoff by a full month, it says so and gives only the interest saved, or says that nothing changes when the saving rounds to $0.
The 22% default APR is close to the Federal Reserve's average commercial-bank rate on card accounts assessed interest, 22.15% in the second quarter of 2026[1]. The minimum-payment formula is the tool's assumption. Your card agreement sets the real one, and the payoff estimate on your statement must use that formula and may assume no new purchases[2]. The tool does not model new purchases, fees, penalty or promotional rates, or interest charged on the daily balance. Verify the methodology or inspect the source code in your browser's dev tools.
Where to go from here
Sources
Bracketed numbers in the text link to these sources. Figures, rates and rules change: check each source’s date before acting on it.
- Federal Reserve Board, G.19 Consumer Credit, release of September 8, 2026 (commercial bank interest rates on credit card plans). Checked 2026-09-26. ↩
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Regulation Z, Appendix M1 to Part 1026: Repayment Disclosures. Checked 2026-09-26. ↩
Calculators are educational estimates, not financial advice. Disclosures · How pages are reviewed