If you’re carrying credit card balances and have joined the growing ranks of consumers who are resolved to wipe out that debt, the Federal Reserve offers a useful tool that can motivate you to translate your good intentions into action.  The Fed's free credit card calculator that shows how long it would take you to pay off your card debt at its current interest rate if you made only the minimum monthly payment, along with the grand total of how much you’d pay in finance charges over that time. 

Let’s say you were carrying a $6,000 balance, which is roughly the average total credit card debt an individual cardholder carries on bank-issued cards.   Let’s assume further that you were paying 17.9% interest, which is the increased rate that Capital One recently imposed on many of its cardholders.   The Federal Reserve calculator reveals that if you made only minimum monthly payments of $120, it would take 37 years to pay off that balance and cost you $15,523 in interest charges over that time.

The calculator also shows the impact of various plans for paying off that debt sooner.  If you select five years as your deadline for paying it off, you’d need to make monthly payments of $153 a month and the total interest you’d pay would drop to $3,123.   If you aimed to get rid of the debt in just two years, your monthly payment would be $300 a month and your total interest tab would come to $1,183.