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The minimum payment is designed to keep you paying.
The minimum payment trap is structural: issuers set it at about 1% of your balance plus that month's interest, so as the balance shrinks, the payment shrinks — and the debt stretches toward two decades. This calculator simulates the minimum-only path month by month, then shows the single most powerful fix: freeze your payment at today's amount and watch years and thousands of dollars of interest fall off.
Cardholders use it the month they realize the balance has not moved in a year: the simulation shows exactly where the payments went and the one change — freezing the payment — that ends it. It is the math behind the warning box on every statement.
Far longer than anyone expects. A $5,000 balance at 22% APR with a typical 1%-plus-interest minimum takes 227 months — 18.9 years — and costs $7,964 in interest, more than 1.5× the original balance. Your statement is required by the CARD Act to show this timeline; check it.
Freeze the payment. Fix your payment at today's minimum instead of letting it shrink: that same $5,000 at 22% dies in 58 months instead of 227, saving $4,842 in interest — without paying a single dollar more than you paid this month. Every extra dollar on top shortens it further.
Because it is a percentage of the remaining balance (typically 1%) plus that month's interest, with a small floor like $25. A shrinking payment keeps principal reduction crawling — the issuer collects interest for years longer. It is legal, disclosed, and entirely designed around the hope that you never do this math.