Are you carrying a balance on one or more credit cards? If so, you aren't alone. In fact, more than half of Brits are in debt and are looking for a way to get out. Unfortunately, digging yourself out of credit card difficult can be a difficult process, particularly if you are only sending in the minimum payment each month. Depending upon how much money you still owe on your card and the interest rate you are paying, paying just the minimum payment each month may mean taking several years to get your debt paid off. If you are ready to work out a serious plan for getting your debt paid off, on the other hand, you might want to use a credit card debt calculator to help you with your planning and budgeting.



Determining How Long it Will Take You Pay Off Your Card

With the first calculator, you can plug in a few pieces of information in order to find out how long it will take you to pay off your debt if you keep paying what you are currently paying. For this calculator, you only need to know your current balance, your APR, and the amount you are paying each month. You just might be shocked at what you see! For example, if you have a ?1,000 balance and you are paying ?20 a month with a 19.99% APR, it will take you 9 years and 1 month to pay off the credit card balance.

Plugging these figures into the credit card calculator and seeing how long it will take to pay off your card may be the eye-opening experience you need to get motivated to send more to your credit card. In addition, you can play around with different payment amounts so you can see how that will affect how long it will take to pay the debt. Increasing your monthly payment to just ?30 per month, for example, will cut the pay off time to just four years and two months. Push it to ?50 per month and it will take you two years and one month to pay off the debt.

Creating a Timeframe

On the other hand, you may have a timeframe in mind for paying off your debt and, therefore, you need to know how much you have to pay each month in order to get the debt paid of on time. In this case, you can use a different calculator that only requires inputting the amount you owe, the interest rate, and when you want to get the debt paid off. This way, if you have a goal of being debt-free in one year, for example, you can easily see how much you have to pay each month.

Let's say you still have that ?1,000 balance with an APR of 19.99% and you want to be debt free in one year. If you plug that information into the calculator, you find that you would have to send ?92.63 each month. Armed with that information, you can determine if your goal is feasible and you can plan a budget that will allow you to send that much money each month.