Two halves of one question. How much — set a date and ClearZero works out the payment, or set a payment and it works out the date. In what order — pick the strategy that decides which debt gets your extra money first.
Free for everyone. Each one decides which debt your extra money attacks first — picking one here reorders your Dashboard, and you can always drag the debts into any order you like instead.
When I was in high school I asked my 94-year-old great-grandfather (born in 1896!) if he had any life advice for me. I assumed he would ponder the question and then give me a lengthy answer full of musings about existence and man's place in the cosmos. But he didn't hesitate. "Don't get into debt!" he said, and then went back to whatever it was he was doing. I found out later that he had borrowed the princely sum of $200 from someone in the 1930s and the psychological weight of that loan had nearly killed him. While perhaps unpoetic, it was good advice — and it will surprise no one that I failed to heed it. But here we both are, and so, as a wise person once said, "now what?"
Some of the best financial advice isn't found in books or apps. It's the kind a parent sits down and gives you at the kitchen table — clear-eyed, unhurried, and free of gimmicks. ClearZero is built in that spirit. It won't tell you anything you don't already know deep down: that debt is a weight, that a plan beats wishful thinking, and that seeing the whole picture honestly is the first step to changing it. What ClearZero does is show you that picture — all of your debts, together, on one screen, not as a table of numbers to squint at, but as a clear visual path toward zero. Because a great illustration tells you more than a table of numbers ever could — and understanding where you're headed is what makes moving feel possible. Just the kind of clear-eyed, practical guidance you'd hope someone wise had given you (and that you had heeded) a little earlier in life.
Our priorities
Privacy & security
Your debt balances, payments, and progress are stored only in your browser's local storage on this device. They never get sent to a ClearZero server, because there isn't one — there's no account to create and no database of customers.
To understand how the site is being used in aggregate (visits per day, which pages people read), we use Google Analytics, configured to anonymize IP addresses. Analytics never sees your debts or any number you enter into the planner. If you'd rather not be counted, browser-level "Do Not Track" or any standard ad blocker will exclude you.
Clearing your browser data — or using a different device — will reset your debts, since they live with the browser, not with us.
How ClearZero calculates
Worth being straight about the machinery, since you're making decisions with these numbers.
Every projection runs the same month-by-month simulation. Each month, interest is charged on every balance at the APR you entered divided by twelve. Minimum payments go out first. Whatever's left over goes entirely to whichever debt sits at the top of your priority order. When a debt reaches zero, the money that was going to it rolls onto the next one — which is why payoff accelerates the further you get.
The planning tools work the same simulation backwards. When you set a target date, ClearZero searches for the smallest monthly payment that reaches it, then re-runs the full projection at that number to confirm it actually lands where promised.
What the model assumes
- Minimum payments hold steady. This is the assumption most worth knowing about. Real credit-card minimums are usually a percentage of the balance, so they shrink as you pay down — which means minimum-only payoff takes longer in reality than any calculator using fixed minimums will show, including this one. Treat the "minimum payments only" figure as the optimistic version.
- Nothing changes. No new borrowing, no rate changes, no promotional periods ending, no fees, no missed payments.
- Extra payments hit principal immediately, in the month you make them.
- Interest compounds monthly. Daily-compounding accounts will differ slightly — usually by a few dollars over the life of the debt, occasionally more on large balances.
None of this makes the projections wrong; it makes them a well-defined baseline. Reality will drift from any plan. The value is in seeing how much a decision moves the finish line, and that comparison holds up even when the absolute numbers shift.
What ClearZero isn't
It isn't financial advice, and it doesn't know anything about you beyond the numbers you typed in — not your income, your rent, whether you have savings, or what else is coming. A payment this site calculates as "what it takes" is arithmetic, not a recommendation that you can or should pay it.
If a plan here would mean skipping essentials or emptying an emergency fund, the honest answer is that it's the wrong plan. Debt paid off slowly still gets paid off. Debt paid off aggressively and then re-borrowed at a worse rate is a step backwards. If you're in real difficulty, a non-profit credit counsellor will do more for you than any calculator.