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Months to clear a credit card balance and interest paid.
Free to use, no sign-up required. Card Payoff is one of 198 tools built into Xenition, alongside a chat that can use them for you.
Shows how many months a fixed monthly payment takes to clear a credit card balance, and the total interest paid along the way, assuming no new spending.
The monthly rate is APR ÷ 12. Each month interest is added to the balance and the payment is subtracted, until the balance reaches zero. If the payment is not more than the first month’s interest the balance never falls, and the tool says so. It stops at 1,200 months.
A 3,000 balance at 19.99% APR paid off at 150 a month takes 25 months (2.1 years) and costs 679.38 in interest. At 100 a month it takes 42 months and 1,192.56 in interest.
The balance never goes down. On 3,000 at 19.99%, the first month’s interest is about 49.98, so any payment at or below that leaves you paying forever.
Interest is charged on what is left each month. Paying more early shrinks the balance faster, so every later month is charged on a smaller amount.
You do not have to open Card Payoff to use it. Ask Xenition in plain language and it runs the right tool, then carries the answer into whatever you are working on — a document, a spreadsheet, a deck.