Check out our loan payoff calculator to figure out how long until you're debt free. You can adjust your loan balance, your payment frequency, and your interest rate to see what impact it makes on your loan term (length).
Once you figure out how long it will take to pay off your loans, you can start to make educated financial choices to potentially refinance your debt, make additional payments, and more!
Check it out here.
Loan Payoff Calculator
Here's our loan payoff calculator. You can:
- Adjust the loan amount
- Adjust the interest rate (APR)
- Adjust the loan term
- Select repayment type (most common is principal and interest)
- Choose your repayment frequency
Some of my favorite things to try:
- Lower the interest rate to see how much you could save by refinancing your debt
- Lower the loan term to see how much your payment would rise if you aggressively try to pay off your loan
- Update the payment frequency (maybe to bi-weekly) to see how much you'll save
How To Payoff Your Loan Faster
There are a few ways to payoff your loan faster (mathematically).
You can either:
- Shorten your loan term
- Make additional payments
- Pay more frequently
That might be difficult for some, but if you're looking to pay off your loan faster, these are ways to make it happen.
Options For Student Loan Debt
If you have student loan debt, depending on your loan type, you might have a lot of options. If you have Federal student loans, you have access to student loan repayment programs, student loan forgiveness programs, and more. Those are great. It might not make sense to do much more than make additional payments with your Federal loans.
If you have private loans, or Federal loans where you plan on paying them off ASAP, refinancing can be a great option. When you refinance your student loans, you are taking out a new private loan to replace your existing loans.
The goal of this new loan should be a lower interest rate or shorter repayment term (or both). If you're looking for the best places to refinance, we recommend Credible as a comparison tool. Check out Credible and compare your options in 2 minutes. Try Credible here. As a bonus, College Investor readers get up to a $1,000 gift card bonus if they complete a refinance! See terms.
Options For Mortgage Debt
For mortgage debt, there aren't many secrets beyond throwing more money at your loan. However, there are ways you can save on interest while you're paying off your mortgage.
The easiest thing to do is simply to make bi-weekly payments. Use the loan payoff calculator and adjust payments to bi-weekly, Watch how much you'll save in interest over the course of the loan! It's huge.
Next, you should look at refinancing your mortgage. If you haven't shopped for rates in a few years, you might be surprised how much you can save. Also, if you're aggressive about paying off your loan, maybe consider switching to a 15 year loan instead of a 30 year loan.
If you're looking for places to refinance, you can go with one of our favorite online mortgage lenders that make the process easy.
If you're okay with a more traditional route, check out Lending Tree to compare your options. You can get a quote from a bunch of lenders in minutes!
Options For Credit Card Debt
If you have credit card debt, there are a lot of options that could help you pay off your credit cards while at the same time saving money. Of course, paying extra always helps, but there's more you can do.
Once of the biggest things you can look at is seeing if you can get a balance transfer card or personal loan to consolidate your cards and reduce your interest.
Right now, there are several promotions for a 0% balance transfer card. If you qualify, you can save a lot by paying no interest while you're reducing your debt.
If you can get a 0% APR balance transfer card that has no fees, then really you do pay $0. See if you can find a balance transfer card here.
If you think you're going to take longer than the promo 0% period (usually 12 months or so), then a personal loan at a lower interest rate might make sense. We like Credible for personal loans because they compare the best options for you. Check out Credible here.
If you can significantly lower your interest rate, you can save over the course of the loan.
Final Thoughts
Figuring out how to pay off your debt can be challenging. Setting up goals and building timelines really helps make the process easier. Play with our loan payoff calculator and see how you can get out of debt effectively.
Editor: Clint Proctor Reviewed by: Claire Tak
Robert Farrington is the founder of The College Investor and is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading voices on student loan debt and saving for college. He holds an MBA from UC San Diego Rady School of Management and has spent over 15 years researching, writing, and advising on student loans, 529 plans, financial aid programs, and saving and investing for young professionals.
Robert has been featured in the The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, NBC News, and Forbes, where he has been a regular personal finance contributor for over a decade. His work combines both professional expertise and personal experience – he successfully navigated his own student loan repayment journey and has helped thousands of readers do the same.
He is committed to making the intersection of personal finance and education transparent and accessible. You can learn more about Robert on the About Page or on his personal site RobertFarrington.com.