A $30,000 balance at 12%, paying $600 a month
- Time to repay
- 5y 10m
- Number of payments
- 70
- Whole years
- 5
Note how much of the total is interest. On a double-digit rate the cost of taking longer is severe.
How long will it take to repay?
Start from the repayment rather than the term: enter what you can pay, and this works out how long the loan runs.
It also tells you when the answer is "never" — if the repayment does not cover the interest, the balance grows, and that is worth knowing immediately rather than discovering over years.
How long to repay calculator
Works out how long a loan takes to clear at a chosen repayment, and what it costs in interest along the way.
What to enter
Balance
What is outstanding now, not the original amount borrowed.
Payment
What you intend to pay each period. If this is below the interest charged each period, the loan never clears — the calculator says so rather than returning a misleading number.
Reading the result
The time is how long the balance takes to reach zero at that payment. The total interest is what the wait costs.
Try a payment slightly above and slightly below the one you had in mind. Near the point where the payment barely exceeds the interest, small changes have enormous effects on the term — a difference of fifty dollars a month can be years.
That sensitivity is the practical finding. It is why an increase that feels trivial can be worth far more than it looks.
Worked examples
Every figure below is computed by the same calculator on this page, from the inputs described. Nothing here is typed in by hand, so an example cannot disagree with the tool.
The same balance at $800 a month
- Time to repay
- 4 years
- Number of payments
- 48
- Whole years
- 4
A third more per month, and the term falls by far more than a third. This is the non-linearity that makes an increase worth more than it appears.
How it is worked out
The balance is run forward period by period: interest is added at the periodic rate, the payment is subtracted, and the periods are counted until the balance reaches zero.
If the interest charged in the first period equals or exceeds the payment, the balance can never fall and the calculator reports that rather than looping.
What it assumes
The rate holds
A rate rise lengthens the term at the same payment.
The payment never changes
Every period, without interruption, until the balance clears.
Where it stops being right
Minimum repayments are not modelled
Credit cards set a minimum that falls as the balance does, which lengthens the term considerably. The credit card payoff calculator handles a fixed payment against a card balance; neither models a declining minimum.
Related calculators
Credit card payoff calculator
Works out how long a card balance takes to clear at a fixed monthly repayment, and what the interest costs.
Extra repayment calculator
Shows how paying more than the minimum each period shortens a home loan and cuts the interest paid.
Home loan repayment calculator
Works out the regular repayment on a home loan, and what it adds up to in interest over the full term.
Putting this calculator on your own site
This calculator can be embedded on a business website, branded to match it, with a call to action that sends the enquiry to that business rather than collecting anything here.