Minimum payment — what the statement is actually asking
The minimum payment is a product. You are the revenue.
The statement asks for one number, and only part of it touches the debt. Enter your balance, then
see why the minimum feels like progress.
$141.67
$5,000 at 22% APR: interest plus 1% of the balance.
$50.00
The other $91.67 is interest. The debt moved by fifty.
What does paying the minimum actually cost you?
A minimum payment is designed to keep you paying, not to get you out of debt. Because it shrinks as the balance shrinks, most of your money goes on interest and the balance barely moves. This tool runs the schedule month by month: it tells you how long the minimum really takes, how much of what you hand over is interest rather than the thing you bought, and - on some ordinary cards - that the minimum never clears the balance at all. Then it shows what a fixed payment does instead.
The free version gives the full answer for your own debt and never clamps it: the payoff time, the interest total, and a comparison against one fixed payment. Pro adds the accelerator grid - what every extra amount a month buys you, from a few dollars up - lets you pin several debts side by side, and adds image and CSV export.
The shareable link is free, for everyone, always. Pro is a separate one-time purchase - if you already subscribe to DCA Simulator Pro, this is not included in it. Worth knowing before you click, rather than at the checkout.
Educational content only - not financial advice. Every figure is in nominal dollars: a debt is repaid in the money of the day, and that is the honest way to show what it costs. The tool assumes the rate holds and you add nothing further to the balance. It does not model promotional rates, changing rates, fees beyond the ones you enter, late charges, balance transfers, or hardship and repayment programs your lender may offer. The minimum-payment rule is the one you select, and real agreements vary - read yours. Run your own numbers.
The minimum payment is a product. You are the revenue.
A minimum payment is not a repayment plan that happens to be slow. It is a number engineered so that the balance falls just fast enough to feel like movement, and just slowly enough to keep the interest running for years.
$141.67
Month one on the defaults: $5,000 at 22% APR, under the common rule of interest plus 1% of the balance. It looks manageable. That is the design.
$50.00
Of that $141.67, $91.67 is interest and $50.00 is principal. You handed over a hundred and forty-one dollars to reduce what you owe by fifty.
Now the part that does the damage, and it is exact rather than rhetorical. Under that rule the payment covers the full month’s interest plus one per cent of the balance — so the balance falls by exactly 1% a month. 5,000 → 4,950 → 4,900.50 → ... Not roughly. Exactly.
And because the payment is a percentage of that shrinking balance, the payment shrinks with it. Month one asks $141.67. A year in it asks $125.57. The bill gets smaller every single month, which reads as progress and is in fact the mechanism that stretches the debt out. You are always paying one per cent of a number that is always getting smaller.
Notice what is not in that sentence: the APR. The interest rate changes how much you hand over. It does not change the 1%. Which is why the minimum is not slow because rates are high — it is slow because of how the minimum itself is defined.
Nothing here is hidden. Check every line.
The tool’s opening defaults, worked by hand so you can audit the method before you trust the output. Replace all of them with your own numbers — they are placeholders, not claims about your debt.
| Paying the minimum | Balance | Interest | Principal | You pay |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month 1 | $5,000.00 | $91.67 | $50.00 | $141.67 |
| Month 2 | $4,950.00 | $90.75 | $49.50 | $140.25 |
| Month 3 | $4,900.50 | $89.84 | $49.01 | $138.85 |
| Month 13 | $4,431.92 | $81.25 | $44.32 | $125.57 |
The shrinking bill is the trap, not the relief
Read the last column downward. $141.67, then $140.25, then $138.85, and $125.57 a year in. The payment falls every month. That feels like the debt loosening its grip, and it is the exact opposite: the payment is 1% of a balance that is getting smaller, so it can only ever get smaller too. A repayment schedule that never demands more of you is a schedule that never ends.
Now hold the payment still instead. On the same $5,000 at 22%, a fixed $200 a month — not much more than the opening minimum — clears the debt in about 34 months, for a total of roughly $6,750. Around $1,750 of that is interest. n = -ln(1 - rB/P) / ln(1+r) = 33.75 months.
That is the whole comparison this tool exists to run: a payment that shrinks against a payment that does not. Same balance, same rate, same starting order of magnitude. The only difference is whether the number you send is allowed to fall. What the minimum path costs in total, and how long it runs, is what the calculator above prints for your figures — and it is worth seeing on your own numbers rather than taking mine.
What the minimum payment calculator runs, month by month.
Four inputs, no account, no email. Nothing is inferred about you and nothing is looked up. Your figures are sent to this site to be calculated and are never written to a database, kept after the answer comes back, or passed to anyone else.
Name the debt
Balance and APR. The rate opens at 22%, which is a placeholder rather than an average — card rates vary enormously and the only one that matters is the one on your statement.
Pick the minimum rule
Two shapes, because lenders use both: interest plus a percent of the balance, or a flat percent of the balance. Your card’s terms say which. It changes the answer more than most people expect.
Set the floor
Most lenders will not bill below a fixed amount — $25 by default. It matters at the tail end, when the percentage rule would otherwise ask for a few dollars a month and the debt would run on almost indefinitely.
Name the alternative
One fixed amount you could send instead, every month, regardless of what the statement asks. The whole output is the distance between those two schedules, month by month, to the end of both.
Two assumptions, and that is the entire budget
This tool deliberately holds almost nothing. There is no inflation input, no investment return, no tax treatment and no forecast of any kind. Every figure it prints is a plain nominal dollar amount — the actual money that actually leaves your account. Do not read any output here as being "in today’s money", because none of it is adjusted.
That is a choice rather than an omission. Debt arithmetic is one of the few places in personal finance where the answer does not depend on predicting anything. The rate is on your statement, the rule is in your terms, and the schedule follows. The moment a debt calculator starts asking what the market will return, it has stopped answering the question you came with.
The two assumptions it does make are the ones you can check in thirty seconds: that your rate holds and that you keep paying. Both are stated because both can break — a promotional rate expiring is the most common way a schedule like this turns out optimistic. If yours is promotional, run it twice, once at each rate, and read the worse one.
Most complaints about this tool are correct.
A debt schedule is the most checkable calculation in personal finance, which makes it the worst place to overclaim. Here are the four arguments against the output that actually land.
“Your $25 floor is not my card’s floor.”
Correct — and it is where this diverges most
Almost certainly true, and it is the input most worth changing. Lenders set the floor differently, and some apply the percentage rule to the statement balance rather than the current balance, which shifts the schedule again.
The floor barely matters at the start and decides the ending. It is what stops the percentage rule from asking for three dollars a month forever. Take the number from your own terms, not from this field, and the tail of the schedule will be right.
“Shouldn’t I invest instead of overpaying?”
A real question — but not at this rate
It is a genuine debate at 4%. It is not one at 22%. Clearing a 22% balance is a guaranteed, tax-free, zero-volatility 22% return, and no honest portfolio expectation competes with that. This is one of the few places in investing where there is a right answer.
Where it becomes a real question is a low-rate mortgage or a subsidised student loan. This tool has nothing to say about those — it is built for expensive revolving debt, and it will happily give you a schedule for a cheap debt that you should probably not be rushing.
“Inflation is eating my debt for me.”
True in principle, absent here on purpose
Fixed nominal debt does erode in real terms, and over a long horizon that is a real effect. This tool models none of it. Every figure it prints is plain nominal dollars, and it never claims to be in today’s money.
At 22% the point is close to academic — the interest outruns any plausible inflation rate several times over. It matters for a 3% mortgage. It does not rescue a credit card, and a calculator that quietly deflated the balance here would be flattering the debt.
“I cannot afford the fixed payment.”
Correct, and the tool should not pretend otherwise
Then the honest use is not to enter a number you cannot send. Enter what you can actually sustain, even if it is only slightly above the opening minimum, and read the schedule that comes back.
The useful finding here is usually not "pay $500". It is how much the first small increment buys, because the early dollars do disproportionate work. If the answer is still out of reach, that is real information about the debt rather than a failure on your part, and no calculator is going to solve it.
Built for people who want the schedule, not the pep talk.
One question, answered properly, once. If what you actually need is something else, the honest answer is that this will not give it to you.
It fits if
- You carry a balance on a card or a revolving line and have never actually seen the schedule the minimum implies — most people have not, because the statement never prints it.
- You can send more than the minimum and want to know what the first extra fifty dollars a month is worth before you commit to it.
- You are deciding between clearing a balance and putting the same money somewhere else, and want the debt half of that comparison stated exactly.
- Someone told you the minimum is fine and you would like to check that against arithmetic rather than against their tone.
It does not fit if
- You cannot service the debt at all. A schedule is not what you need — a non-profit debt counsellor is, and they are usually free. This tool will only tell you a true thing that does not help.
- The debt is a low-rate mortgage or a subsidised student loan. It will produce a schedule, and rushing to clear cheap debt is often the wrong call.
- You want a payoff strategy across several debts — avalanche, snowball, ordering. This prices one debt at a time against one alternative payment.
- You want to be told it will be fine. It reports what the arithmetic says, and on an expensive balance that is frequently unwelcome.
What the minimum is actually costing you.
Answered against what the tool actually does, not against what would be convenient to claim.
What happens if you only pay the minimum payment?
The debt runs for years, and the reason is structural rather than a matter of the rate. Under the common rule — interest, plus one per cent of the balance — the payment covers the whole month’s interest and exactly one per cent of what you owe. So the balance falls by exactly 1% a month. Not roughly: exactly.
Because the payment is a percentage of that shrinking balance, the payment shrinks too. On $5,000 at 22% it opens at $141.67 and is $125.57 a year later. A falling bill reads as progress, and it is the precise mechanism that stretches the debt out.
How is a minimum payment calculated?
Two shapes are common and lenders use both. The first is interest plus a percentage of the balance, typically 1%. The second is a flat percentage of the balance, which does not separate out the interest. Both are subject to a floor — a fixed minimum, often around $25, below which the lender will not bill.
Which one your card uses is in your terms, and it changes the schedule materially. The calculator lets you set the shape, the percentage and the floor, because guessing any of the three produces an answer about somebody else’s debt.
How much faster is a fixed payment?
Dramatically, and the size of the difference surprises most people because the two payments start so close together. On $5,000 at 22%, the minimum opens at $141.67. A fixed $200 a month — about sixty dollars more — clears the whole balance in about 34 months, for roughly $6,750 in total, of which about $1,750 is interest. n = -ln(1 - rB/P) / ln(1+r) = 33.75 months.
The mechanism is simply that the payment is not allowed to fall. Every month the balance drops, more of the same fixed $200 goes to principal, and the thing accelerates into itself. A payment that shrinks with the balance can never do that, which is the entire difference between the two schedules.
Should I pay off the card or invest the money?
At a rate like 22%, clear the card. Paying down a 22% balance is a guaranteed, tax-free, zero-volatility 22% return, and no honest expectation for a portfolio competes with that. This is one of the few questions in personal finance with a right answer rather than a trade-off.
It becomes a genuine debate at low rates — a subsidised student loan or a cheap fixed mortgage. This tool has nothing useful to say about those; it will produce a schedule for a 3% debt that you should probably not be rushing to clear.
Are the figures adjusted for inflation?
No, and that is deliberate. Every number this tool prints is a plain nominal dollar amount — the actual money that actually leaves your account. There is no inflation input, no investment return and no forecast of any kind.
Debt arithmetic is one of the few places where the answer does not depend on predicting anything: the rate is on your statement, the rule is in your terms, and the schedule follows. A debt calculator that starts asking what the market will do has stopped answering the question you arrived with.
Is my data saved or sent anywhere?
No. There is no account, no email gate and no sign-up. Your figures are sent to this site to be calculated, and the answer comes straight back — no balance, rate or schedule is written to a database, kept after the response, or passed to any third party.
The only thing this page stores in your browser is whether you chose dark mode. The free version gives the full, uncapped schedule for your own debt, and the shareable result link is free for everyone.
Everything above stays free. Pro goes further.
Pro adds the accelerator grid — what every extra amount a month buys you, from a few dollars up — lets you pin several debts side by side, and adds image and CSV export.
Paid once. Not a subscription, not a bundle.
The free version gives the full answer for your own debt and never clamps it, and the shareable link is free for everyone, always. If the schedule already showed you what the minimum was costing, you do not need this. Educational content only — not financial advice.