Play · debt payoff strategy

Snowball vs. Avalanche

Updated 2026-07-25 · Concept: payoff order, interest cost, behavior vs math

Two honest ways out of debt. Snowball: pay minimums on everything, throw every spare dollar at the smallest balance: quick wins keep you going. Avalanche: same discipline, but attack the highest interest rate: mathematically cheapest. Enter your debts (nothing is stored or sent) and see both, honestly.

Predict first

With the sample debts below and $200 extra per month: how much more interest does snowball cost than avalanche: ?

Debt	Balance $	APR %	Min/mo $

Extra toward debt monthly ($)

Method: interest accrues monthly (APR/12); minimums paid on all debts; the extra plus every freed-up minimum rolls to the front of the chosen order. Research note: a Kellogg School study of 6,000 borrowers found people who concentrate on one account first are likelier to finish: the snowball's real advantage is persistence, while avalanche minimizes interest. Both beat drifting.

The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.

Proverbs 22:7

KJV. An observation about how debt works, not a curse, and the reason both of these strategies share one goal: freedom to serve. See the full theme: Debt, borrowing, and surety.

This tool needs JavaScript. Worked example (computed with the same engine): three debts: $500 at 10% ($25 min), $3,000 at 24% ($90 min), $8,000 at 7% ($250 min), with $200/mo extra: both orders finish in 1 year 11 months; avalanche costs $1,102 in interest, snowball $1,156, a $54 difference here. With bigger high-APR balances the gap grows into the thousands.