Since I wrote about paying off $15,040 in credit card debt over 20 months, the question I get asked most is some version of “wait, why avalanche and not snowball?” So here’s the actual answer, plus the math I ran afterward to check whether I made the right call or just got lucky.
The Two Methods, Quickly
Debt snowball: pay minimums on everything, then throw every extra dollar at your smallest balance first, regardless of interest rate. Once it’s gone, roll that payment into the next-smallest. The appeal is speed to your first win — you clear a whole account faster, which keeps a lot of people motivated.
Debt avalanche: pay minimums on everything, then throw every extra dollar at your highest-interest balance first, regardless of size. It usually saves more money in interest, but your first full payoff can take longer if your highest-rate card also happens to be your biggest balance.
Mine happened to be both. My highest rate, 24.99%, was also my biggest balance — $6,890, from a broker’s fee and moving costs. That’s not always how it works out, and it’s worth checking your own numbers before assuming either method’s usual advantage applies to your specific cards.
Why I Picked Avalanche
I’m the kind of person who gets more anxious watching a total balance stay high than motivated by clearing one small account, so the math mattered more to me than the momentum. Before I started, I ran my three balances — the $6,890 broker’s-fee card at 24.99%, the $3,940 dental card at 22.99%, and the $4,210 everyday-spending card at 19.99% — through a debt payoff calculator both ways.
Avalanche order, which is what I actually did: Card A, then Card B, then Card C. My real total interest paid over the 20 months ended up right around $2,510.
What Snowball Would Have Actually Cost Me
Out of curiosity, after I finished paying everything off, I re-ran my real payment history through the same calculator in snowball order instead — smallest balance first, so Card C, then B, then A — just to see what I’d have given up.
The estimate: about $3,270 in total interest, roughly $760 more than what I actually paid. The tradeoff on the other side is real, though — I’d have hit my first zero-balance card around month 7 or 8 instead of month 13, since Card C was the smallest.
So the honest answer is that snowball would have gotten me a win about five months sooner, for a cost of roughly $760.
The Month I Almost Switched
Around month 7, right when my freelance work dried up for the summer and my progress slowed to $480 extra a month, I seriously considered switching strategies. Staring at Card A, barely below where it had started months earlier, felt discouraging in a way no spreadsheet really prepares you for. I pulled up what switching to snowball would look like at that exact point and realized I’d already put too much extra into Card A to make restarting on Card C worth the psychological reset. I stuck with avalanche mostly out of sunk-cost logic, if I’m being fully honest, not pure discipline.
How I’d Actually Tell Someone to Choose
Run your own three numbers, not mine. If your highest-interest card is also your smallest balance, there’s no real tradeoff at all — avalanche wins on both math and motivation, easy choice. The decision only gets hard when, like me, your biggest balance and your highest rate are the same card, or close to it.
If a few hundred dollars in extra interest is a price you’d pay for a faster first win, and you know from experience that you need visible progress to stay consistent, snowball is a completely reasonable trade, not a lesser one. If you’re more motivated by watching the total number shrink than by closing a specific account, avalanche is worth the wait.
What I wouldn’t recommend is picking a method and then re-litigating whether it was the “optimal” one every rough month, the way I did around month 7. The method you abandon in month 8 costs more than either method finished in month 20.