Credit Card Payoff Calculator

A fixed monthly payment can clear a balance in a couple of years. Minimum payments alone can genuinely take 50+ years — see the real difference.

✓ Free to use ✓ Real minimum-payment simulation ✓ Side-by-side comparison ✓ Shareable results

Current Balance

APR (%)

Fixed Monthly Payment (what you'd actually pay)

▸ Minimum payment structure

Minimum Payment (% of balance)

Minimum Payment Floor (£)

Fixed Payment Plan

Time to Pay Off

Total Interest

Total Paid

Minimum Payments Only

Time to Pay Off

Total Interest

Total Paid

✨ More for your finances

Why the minimum payment trap is a real trap, not a scare tactic

Most UK credit cards set the minimum payment as a percentage of your remaining balance (commonly around 1-3%), with a small flat floor. That means as your balance falls, your required payment falls too — so almost all of it keeps going to interest instead of principal, and the payoff timeline stretches out for years, sometimes decades, sometimes effectively never within a normal lifetime.

Worked example

A £3,000 balance at 24.9% APR: pay a fixed £150/month and it clears in 27 months (2.3 years), costing £916 in interest. Pay only the minimum (2.5% of balance, £5 floor) and it's still not paid off after 50 years — having already cost over £13,500 in interest, more than four times the original balance, with no end in sight.

The fix is almost always the same: pay a fixed amount, not a percentage

Setting a fixed monthly payment — even a modest one — instead of "whatever the minimum happens to be this month" changes the entire trajectory, because a fixed payment covers a growing share of principal every month as interest shrinks, rather than a shrinking share.

The FCA (UK's financial regulator) has specifically flagged minimum-payment-only repayment as a major driver of persistent problem debt. If you're only able to make minimum payments long-term, that's a signal worth taking seriously — free, confidential debt advice is available from StepChange, National Debtline, and other UK charities.

Frequently Asked Questions

What counts as a "good" fixed payment amount?+

Any amount meaningfully above the minimum, ideally enough to clear the balance within 2-3 years — use the calculator above to test different amounts and see the payoff time and total interest for each. See the full 50-year minimum-payment simulation →

Should I do a balance transfer instead?+

A 0% balance transfer card can eliminate interest entirely for a promotional period (often 12-24 months), which is usually far better than paying 20%+ APR — but only if you can realistically clear the balance (or most of it) before the promotional rate ends, and watch for transfer fees.

Is it ever fine to pay only the minimum?+

Occasionally, for a single month during a genuine cash-flow squeeze — but as an ongoing strategy, this calculator shows why it rarely works out, since the balance can take decades to clear and the total interest often exceeds the original debt.