PAY OFF CREDIT CARD DEBT SO YOU CAN SPEND YOUR MONEY ON GOODS, NOT INTEREST
What minimum payments actually cost you
A credit card's minimum payment is built to cover interest first. That's why a balance can sit for years without moving much, no matter how reliably you pay it.
Chapter 01
WHY THE MINIMUM NEVER MOVES THE BALANCE MUCH
A credit card's minimum payment is calculated to land just above what a month's interest costs. Most of what you send in covers the interest that already accrued since the last statement, and only a small piece actually touches the principal. That isn't a mistake in how the card works, it's the design.
It's also why paying the minimum, faithfully, every month, without ever missing one, can still take an extremely long time to clear a balance in full. On a typical card balance and rate, sending only the minimum can take on the order of 20 to 25 years to pay off completely, simply because so little of each payment is principal.
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What changes when the balance comes off the card's math
A debt management plan doesn't erase what you owe or wipe out interest that's already accrued. What it does is take your balance off the card's minimum-payment structure and put it on a fixed schedule worked out with a counselor, with one payment covering what used to be several separate minimums.
That's a different shape of payment, not a claim about a specific date it will be finished. A counselor will look at your actual cards, the balances and the rates, and tell you plainly how the numbers on your accounts would work under a plan before you agree to anything.
Chapter 03
Interest is the part you're actually fighting
Pay off credit card debt so you can spend your money on goods, not interest. Every dollar that goes toward interest is a dollar that left your side of the ledger before it ever touched what you owe, and it never buys you anything you can point to.
That's the case for looking at the shape of a payment, not just its size. Two people sending the same amount each month can be in very different positions depending on how much of that payment is interest and how much is actually principal.
One call, your actual cards
There's no credit check to have this conversation and nothing gets signed on the first call. A counselor at our Lavaca Street office will go through what you're carrying, card by card, and tell you honestly whether consolidating that revolving debt into one payment fits your situation.
If it doesn't fit, you'll hear that too. Credit card debt behaves differently from a car loan or a medical bill, which is why it gets its own page here instead of a paragraph folded into a general one.
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How this fits with the wider plan
This page is about the mechanics of a card balance specifically. For how consolidation works across every kind of unsecured debt, not just credit cards, see debt consolidation. For the formal, month-by-month structure a counselor sets up once you enroll, see the debt management plan page.
Bring your cards to the call
A counselor will go through your actual balances with you, at no cost, and tell you plainly whether a single payment would help.