Minimum Payment Calculator
Card & minimum
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Know what this estimate is based on
- Jurisdiction
- United States — Truth in Lending disclosure and the CARD Act set the floor; the terms that decide your balance are in your cardholder or loan agreement
- Rules and time period
- APRs, fees, promotional periods and minimum-payment formulas are the ones you enter; an issuer can change several of them with notice.
- Scope and limitations
- Educational estimate only. Your issuer sets the minimum-payment formula, how a payment is allocated across balances, when interest is charged and any fees or promotional terms — check your agreement for the figures that bind, and expect a payoff date to move if a payment is late.
- Source links checked
- Sep 19, 2026
Built and regression-tested by Smart Tools Lab. It has not been individually reviewed by a licensed financial, tax, or legal professional.
Primary sources
How to use
- 01
Enter the balance you are carrying and the APR on your statement.
- 02
Leave the minimum-payment rule at its defaults unless your cardholder agreement says otherwise — the interest plus 1% of the balance, never below $25, is what most U.S. issuers use.
- 03
Read the payoff time and the total interest: this is the slow case, the one that happens if you never pay a dollar more than you are asked to.
- 04
Compare it with the three-year row — the same comparison your statement is required to print beside the minimum — to see what a fixed payment buys.
- 05
If the gap looks worth closing, take the balance and APR to the Credit Card Payoff Calculator and try a payment you could actually sustain.
Formula
A U.S. minimum payment is not a flat percentage of the balance. Almost every issuer sets it as this month's interest plus a small slice of the principal — commonly 1% — and never lets it fall below a dollar floor, usually $25 to $35. In formula terms each month's payment is max(floor, interest + balance x principal percentage). The engine runs that as a loop. Interest for the month is the balance times the APR divided by 12. The minimum is recalculated on the balance that remains, so it covers the interest in full and puts the rest against principal. What is left carries into the next month, where a smaller balance produces a smaller minimum. That is the whole trap: the payment shrinks as fast as the balance does, so the amount of principal retired each month barely moves. The tool counts the months until the balance clears, sums every finance charge, records the first minimum and reports total paid as the original balance plus all the interest. It also rebuilds the comparison the CARD Act requires on your statement — what the same balance costs if you instead clear it in 36 months.
Example
Take a $6,000 balance at 22% APR, with the minimum set to interest plus 1% of the balance and a $25 floor. The monthly rate is the APR divided by 12: 22% / 12 = 1.8333% a month. Month 1. Interest is $6,000 x 1.8333% = $110.00. The minimum is that interest plus 1% of the balance: $110.00 + $60.00 = $170.00. Because the interest is covered first, only $60.00 comes off the principal, leaving $5,940.00. Month 2. The balance is smaller, so the minimum is smaller: interest is $108.90 and 1% of $5,940 is $59.40, a minimum of $168.30 — $1.70 less than last month. Principal falls by $59.40. That is the pattern. The payment shrinks every month because it is pegged to a falling balance, so the principal retired each month shrinks with it. Run the loop to the end and the card takes 249 months to clear — 20 years and 9 months. Total interest is about $9,933, and total paid is $6,000 + $9,933 = about $15,933. The $6,000 borrowed costs more than $9,900 to carry. The statement box makes the alternative concrete: paying $229 a month instead clears the same card in 36 months for $8,249 in total — $7,684 less, and 17 years and 9 months sooner.
Definitions
- Minimum payment
- The least your issuer will accept without the account going delinquent. Normally the greater of a fixed floor or this month's interest plus a slice of the principal.
- Payment floor
- The fixed dollar amount a minimum never drops below, commonly $25 to $35. Without it, a percentage-based minimum shrinks forever and the balance never clears.
- Principal slice
- The portion of the minimum above the interest — typically 1% of the balance. It is the only part that actually reduces what you owe.
- CARD Act statement box
- The disclosure U.S. issuers must print on every statement: payoff time at the minimum, and the payment that would clear the balance in three years.
- Amortizing
- A payment structure that retires the debt on a schedule. A minimum payment is deliberately not amortizing, which is why it has no fixed end date.
- Penalty APR
- A higher rate — often near 30% — an issuer may apply after a payment is 60 days late. It can persist until six consecutive payments arrive on time.
- Delinquency
- A payment 30 or more days late. It is reported to the credit bureaus and is among the most damaging single events for a credit score.
- Interest share
- Interest as a proportion of everything you pay. At the minimum on a high-APR card it commonly exceeds half.
- Three-year payoff
- The fixed payment that clears the balance in 36 months. The reference point your statement prints because it is achievable and dramatically cheaper.
- Revolver
- A cardholder who carries a balance from month to month rather than paying in full. Roughly half of U.S. cardholders do.
- Average daily balance
- The basis most issuers charge interest on — your balance averaged across every day of the cycle, not the amount showing on the statement date.
- Cardholder agreement
- The contract that states your exact minimum-payment formula, APRs, fees and grace-period rules. The authority when it disagrees with any calculator.
Good to know
What this calculator actually measures
This tool answers one focused question: if a credit card balance is paid using only its required minimum, month after month, how long does it take to clear and what does it cost? It is not a budgeting tool and not a fixed-payment planner. It isolates a single behavior -- always paying exactly the minimum -- and follows it to the end. The required minimum here is defined the way most U.S. issuers define it: this month's interest plus a small slice of the balance, with a fixed floor so the payment never collapses to nothing. Say a card charges 22% APR on a $6,000 balance, with the minimum set to interest plus 1% of the balance and a $25 floor. The engine adds interest, pays the recalculated minimum, and repeats until the balance reaches zero. It then reports four numbers, and for that card they are 20 years and 9 months to pay off, $9,933 of total interest, a first minimum payment of $170, and $15,933 paid in total. Each output exposes the trap from a different angle. The payoff time shows the sheer duration. Total interest shows the cumulative price. The first minimum anchors how deceptively small the starting payment is. Total paid combines principal and interest into the full lifetime cost. Together they tell a story that the single figure at the bottom of a statement never does, because that figure is only the next minimum -- never the 248 minimums still to come, nor the interest they conceal. The purpose of this page is to make that hidden trajectory visible and concrete, so the consequence of a seemingly harmless habit becomes a number you can see.
Why a percentage minimum shrinks every month
The heart of the minimum-payment trap is that the payment is not a fixed amount -- it is rebuilt from your balance every month. Under the structure most U.S. issuers use, the minimum is this month's interest plus a slice of the balance, typically 1%, subject to a small fixed floor. On a $6,000 balance at 22% the first minimum is $170: $110 of interest plus $60 of principal. The moment that payment lands the balance falls to $5,940, and next month's minimum is rebuilt on the smaller figure -- interest of $108.90 plus $59.40 of principal, a minimum of $168.30. The payment has shrunk by $1.70 in a single month, and it will shrink again the month after, and every month thereafter. This is the opposite of how a loan is structured. A standard loan fixes the payment up front so that an ever-larger slice goes to principal as interest falls. A minimum rebuilt from the balance does the reverse: as the balance falls, the payment falls with it, so the amount of principal retired each month never gets the chance to grow. The debt enters a long, gentle glide rather than a decisive descent. The interest portion of the minimum is the part that does no work at all -- it exactly cancels the finance charge just added -- so only the 1% slice moves the balance, and 1% of a shrinking balance is a shrinking amount. Understanding this single mechanic explains every surprising number this calculator produces.
The anatomy of one month inside the loop
It helps to watch a single month in slow motion, because the whole two-decade outcome is just this one step repeated 249 times. Begin month one with a $6,000 balance at 22%. First, interest is applied: the APR divided by 12 gives a monthly rate of 1.8333%, and $6,000 x 1.8333% is $110.00. Next the minimum is built from that interest plus 1% of the balance: $110.00 + $60.00 = $170.00. That $170.00 is then applied. The first $110.00 of it merely cancels the interest just added -- it buys no progress at all. Only the remaining $60.00 actually reduces what you owe, leaving $5,940.00. So a $170 payment moved the needle by $60. The ratio is the whole problem in miniature: roughly two-thirds of the payment is consumed by interest, and barely a third reaches principal. Because next month's minimum is smaller and next month's interest charge is nearly as large, that thin sliver of principal repayment shrinks further -- $59.40 in month two, and less again after that. Multiply this lopsided split across 249 months and the long payoff stops being mysterious. Every month is a small, honest transaction; it is their accumulation under a shrinking payment that produces the trap.
How a manageable balance becomes a multi-decade obligation
Run that scenario to its conclusion and the result is striking: 249 months, or 20 years and 9 months, to clear a $6,000 balance. A debt that feels ordinary outlasts most car loans several times over. The reason is the tail. Across the first year, paying only the minimum reduces the balance from $6,000 to about $5,318 -- under $700 of progress in twelve months, because interest in that year alone comes to about $1,250. After five years the balance is still about $3,283; after ten years, about $1,796; after fifteen, about $983; after twenty, about $186. The balance does not so much fall as erode, and the erosion slows the lower it goes, since the minimum keeps shrinking alongside it. This is why the payoff is measured in decades rather than years. A fixed-payment loan of the same size and rate would carve a steep, predictable path to zero. The shrinking minimum instead traces a long, flattening curve. The headline payoff figure is the single most important output of this tool precisely because it converts an abstract habit -- 'I just pay the minimum' -- into a vivid span of time. Seeing that a routine $6,000 card balance could still be there two decades later reframes the minimum from a convenience into a cost, and that reframing is the entire point of running the calculation.
Reading the total-interest figure honestly
On that card the total interest reaches about $9,933 -- more than one and a half times the $6,000 originally borrowed, and 62.3% of everything you hand over. That number can look like an error, but it follows directly from the mechanics. Total interest is nothing more than every monthly finance charge added together, and when the payoff runs for 249 months, there are 249 finance charges to add. More importantly, those charges stay large for a long time because the balance stays large for a long time. Interest is always calculated on the outstanding balance, so a debt that is still above $3,000 five years in generates substantial interest year after year -- about $4,981 of the lifetime total has already accrued by the end of year five. The shrinking minimum is what keeps the balance elevated, and the elevated balance is what keeps the interest flowing. Total paid pulls this together: $6,000 of principal plus about $9,933 of interest equals roughly $15,933 handed over in total. Put differently, for every dollar borrowed, more than two and a half dollars leave your pocket before the debt is gone. This is the figure that should anchor any decision about minimum payments. It is not a penalty or a fee -- it is the natural arithmetic of a balance left outstanding for two decades under a payment designed to decline.
The fixed-payment contrast that defines the trap
The clearest way to feel the trap is to compare paying the shrinking minimum against simply freezing that first minimum in place. On a $6,000 balance at 22% the first minimum is $170. If you let it shrink as the balance falls, payoff takes 20 years and 9 months and costs $9,933 in interest. If instead you commit to paying a flat $170 every month -- the exact same starting amount, just never reduced -- the same balance clears in 58 months, a little under five years, with total interest of about $3,746. The starting payment is identical; only the willingness to let it fall differs. That single difference is worth about sixteen years and roughly $6,187 of interest. The mechanism is intuitive once seen: in the later months, when the balance-based minimum would have collapsed to a trickle, a held-flat payment is throwing its full weight at a small remaining balance and demolishing it quickly. The shrinking version, by contrast, eases off precisely when finishing strong would matter most. This contrast defines the lane of this tool. It does not plan the fixed-payment path in detail -- the Credit Card Payoff Calculator does that -- but it makes unmistakably clear that the decline of the payment, not the size of the starting payment, is the engine of the disaster. The escape is not necessarily paying more at the outset; it is refusing to pay less over time.
What the minimum percentage does to the timeline
The principal slice is the most powerful single dial on this calculator, and a small change to it produces a large swing. With the minimum set to interest plus 1% of the balance, the first payment on a $6,000 balance at 22% is $170 and payoff runs 20 years and 9 months, with $9,933 of interest. Raise the slice to 2% and the first payment rises to $230 -- only $60 more -- but payoff collapses to 146 months, 12 years and 2 months, and total interest falls to about $5,145. A first payment 35% larger cuts more than eight years and nearly half the interest. The reason is that the slice governs how aggressively principal is attacked in the crucial early months, when the balance, and therefore the interest, is at its peak. A larger slice means a larger early payment, which retires more principal before interest can compound against it, which lowers next month's balance more steeply, which feeds a faster, self-reinforcing descent. The same self-reinforcement that traps you at 1% works in your favor at 2%. This is why two cards with identical balances and rates can have very different real-world costs depending solely on how their minimums are defined -- and it is why your cardholder agreement, not a generic rule of thumb, is the document that settles what your minimum actually is.
The role and limits of the payment floor
Every balance-based minimum eventually runs into a problem: as the balance shrinks toward zero, a percentage of it shrinks too, and without a backstop the payment would dwindle to a few dollars and the debt would crawl on almost forever. The floor solves that. It is a small absolute amount -- commonly $25 to $35 -- that the payment can never fall below, so once interest plus the 1% slice drops under the floor, the flat floor amount takes over and finally retires the remaining balance at a steady, non-shrinking pace. Set the floor to zero on this calculator and it answers 'Never', which is the honest result: 1% of a shrinking balance approaches zero without arriving. In principle, then, the floor is the mechanism's safety valve. In practice it barely changes the outcome, and understanding why is instructive. On a $6,000 balance at 22% with a $25 floor, the floor only takes over during the sixteenth year, by which point the balance has already fallen under $1,000 and more than $9,400 of the $9,933 total interest has been charged. Raising the floor from $25 to $50 pulls payoff in from 20 years and 9 months to 15 years -- a real improvement, and still a decade and a half. The floor rescues the final, nearly empty stretch of the journey, not the long, expensive middle where the trap actually operates. Its existence offers false reassurance: it guarantees the debt will eventually end, but it does nothing to prevent the years of slow erosion that make the minimum-payment path so costly.
Why the statement minimum hides the real cost
A monthly card statement is built around a single, soothing number: the minimum due this month. It is, by design, the smallest payment that keeps the account in good standing, and set against the balance it looks almost trivial -- $170 against $6,000. Since the CARD Act of 2009, U.S. statements have been required to print more than that: a box showing how long the balance would take at the minimum, and what a three-year payoff would cost instead. That box is a real improvement, but it is easy to skim past, it rests on the issuer's assumptions rather than yours, and it shows two endpoints without the arithmetic that connects them. What it does not let you do is change an input and watch the answer move. This calculator reproduces the same comparison from your own numbers and then goes further. For a $6,000 balance at 22% it shows the first minimum of $170, the shrinking pattern behind it, the year-by-year erosion of the balance, and the interest accumulating the whole time: 249 months to clear, $9,933 of interest, $15,933 paid in total -- against $229 a month clearing the same card in 36 months for $8,249. The behavioral lesson is that affordability in the moment is not the same as affordability over time. A payment that always feels easy is precisely the payment most likely to keep you in debt the longest, because ease is the bait and duration is the cost.
Turning the numbers into a decision
The value of this tool is not in admiring how bad the minimum-payment path is, but in using its outputs to act. Start with the payoff time: 20 years and 9 months on a $6,000 balance at 22% says the current path is unsustainable, however comfortable each monthly minimum feels. Next, look at the gap between what the minimum costs and what a fixed payment costs -- $15,933 paid in total at the minimum against $8,249 at the three-year figure of $229 a month, or $3,746 of interest instead of $9,933 if you simply hold that first $170 minimum steady. That difference is the prize for changing behavior. The most reliable move the mechanics suggest is simple: stop letting the payment shrink. Pick a payment at least equal to the first minimum and hold it there, or larger if your budget allows, and the long tail disappears -- even $195 a month, $25 above the first minimum, clears the card in 46 months for $2,913 of interest. From there the Credit Card Payoff Calculator can show the precise new timeline, and for several balances at once the Debt Avalanche Calculator can order them by interest rate to minimize total cost. A balance transfer to a 0% offer can pause the interest entirely while you attack the principal. This tool's specific contribution is the diagnosis: it quantifies exactly how much the minimum-payment habit is costing in time and money. Run your real numbers, note the payoff time and the interest, then compare them against any alternative. The decision usually makes itself once the hidden trajectory is on the screen in front of you.
Frequently asked questions
How is a minimum payment calculated?
Most U.S. issuers use the greater of a fixed floor — commonly $25 to $35 — or this month's interest plus roughly 1% of the balance. Some use a flat 2% to 3% of the balance instead. Your cardholder agreement states the exact formula.
Why does the minimum get smaller every month?
Because it is a percentage of a shrinking balance. As the balance falls, so does the interest and so does the 1% slice, which is exactly what stretches the payoff out — you are paying less each month precisely because you are making progress.
Why does the payoff take twenty years?
Because the minimum is designed to cover the interest and only a sliver of principal. On a $6,000 balance at 22%, the first minimum is about $170 of which $110 is interest — only $60 comes off what you owe.
Is paying the minimum bad for my credit score?
Paying the minimum on time keeps your payment history clean, which is the largest scoring factor. The damage is indirect: the balance stays high for years, so credit utilization stays high, and that is the second-largest factor.
What is the box on my statement that shows this?
The CARD Act of 2009 requires issuers to print, on every statement, how long the balance takes at the minimum and what a three-year payoff would cost instead. This calculator reproduces that comparison from your own numbers.
What happens if I pay slightly more than the minimum?
The extra lands entirely on principal, and the effect compounds — a smaller balance generates less interest next month, so more of the following payment goes to principal too. Even $25 a month above the minimum changes the payoff by years.