Debt Snowball Calculator

With this debt snowball calculator, you can quickly check how much interest you can save if you use the debt snowball method to pay off multiple loans.

You can also follow the snowball effect on the payment schedules and balances of your debts, so you will know how to allocate your payments to reduce your interest charges while keeping fixed monthly payments.

What's more, you can compare your current debt repayment with what your debt could be with the snowball method. Read further, because we also explain what the debt snowball definition is.

If you would like rather consolidate your debt, check our debt consolidation calculator.

The debt snowball method is an accelerated debt payoff method that you can apply when you have multiple outstanding debt balances that need to be repaid and your individual monthly payments are not fixed. It follows a rollover process, which means that when you repay one of the debts, the freed-up payment amount is allocated among the rest of the debts, keeping the monthly payment constant.

The process always directs the freed-up money to the debt with the lowest debt balance, which results in the fastest elimination of debts. In contrast to the debt avalanche method (learn more by our debt avalanche calculator), where the base of the payment allocation is the lowest interest rate, leading to the lowest finance charges, the snowball method prioritize debt elimination over lower interest payment.

Although the snowball method can result in larger interest charges than the debt avalanche method, paying off any debt can provide a powerful emotional stimulus in the form of a reward that may keep you motivated to pay off all your debt faster.

The best way to measure the the snowball effect on your debt is to compute the repayment term and the charged interest in both scenarios and then compare them.

Our debt snowball calculator provides a convenient platform for the comparing your debts from multiple angles. The three most prominent bases for comparison are the charged interest, the repayment term and the APR.

In our calculator, we estimate the APR for your current debt without snowball acceleration with the weighted average method. This means that the APRs of each of your debts is weighted according to the related balances. For the debt snowball method, the fixed monthly payment makes it possible to compute the new rate by applying the Newton method on the debt total.

Below you can find the instruction explaining how to use the debt snowball calculator:

1. For the first step you need to set the number of debts you have. Note that the maximum number of debts in our calculator is six, and you must have at least two debts to apply the debt snowball method.

2. Specify your debt balances with their associated interest rates and monthly payment amounts.

Snowball effect

After these two simple steps you will immediately see the snowball effect on your debt. Firstly, you can read the total amount of your debt, then you can learn how much interest you can save and how much faster you can pay off your debt with the debt snowball method.

Summary

In the summary section at the bottom of our tool you can see the comparison between your current debt and your debt with snowball method.

• APR: we show you the actual APR for both cases which is the best way of comparison of debts from the perspective of borrowing cost;
• Monthly payment: you can see the precise allocation of payment for each of your debts in the payment schedule table;
• Payoff term: you can learn the remaining term in both scenarios; and
• Total payable and Total interest.

Balances

In the dynamic chart you can follow the balances both with and without the debt snowball method.

Payment schedules

You can check the table of payment schedules of your original total debt without the snowball effect and your debt with the snowball acceleration. Also, you can learn when and with what amount you should pay to each of your debts to minimize your total debt.