What Minimum Payments Really Cost at Today's Rates

Card issuers publish minimum payment formulas; the Federal Reserve publishes the average APR. Put the two together and you get a table nobody prints on a statement: how long a balance actually takes to clear, and what it costs, if the minimum is all you ever pay. Below is that table at the Fed's most recent average rate — 22.15% — computed with the same code that runs our minimum payment calculator, so you can rerun every row yourself.

Today's average card APR: 22.15%

The Fed's consumer credit release (Consumer Credit — G.19, August 2026 release, covering data through June 2026) tracks two average credit card rates. Across all accounts at commercial banks, the average APR is 20.94%. Across accounts assessed interest — the cards whose owners actually carry a balance — it's 22.15%. The second number is the honest one for this exercise: if you're paying minimums, you're in that group. (The rate series is surveyed quarterly; 22.15% is the preliminary figure for the second quarter of 2026.)

Minimum-only payoff at 22.15% APR

Assumptions: the most common issuer formula — a minimum of 2% of the balance with a $25 floor, recalculated monthly — at 22.15% APR, with no new charges. Every row links to the calculator preloaded with its inputs.

Why the table looks like that

Start with the $5,000 row. The first minimum is $100 — and at 22.15% APR, $92.29 of it is that month's interest. About $8 touches the balance. Next month the balance is fractionally smaller, so the minimum is fractionally smaller too, and the same ratio repeats: the payment is engineered to shrink in step with the debt, which is how a four-figure balance turns into an 86-year project and $47,000 of interest.

The $10,000 row is worse than slow — the calculator caps its simulation at 100 years and reports anything beyond that as what it is: effectively never. A percentage-based minimum scales with the balance, so a bigger balance doesn't bring a bigger hammer; it just accrues a bigger interest bill each month, forever.

The $1,000 row finishes in six years for one reason only: the $25 floor. Two percent of $1,000 is $20, so the floor takes over from the very first payment and — unlike the percentage — refuses to shrink as the balance falls. The floor is the only part of the minimum formula that actually finishes a card off, and it only bites on small balances.

One honest limitation: our formula reads the balance before the month's interest is added. Many issuers compute the minimum on the statement balance including that month's interest and fees, so your real statement minimum can be slightly higher and the real payoff slightly different. Treat the table as the optimistic end — the true numbers are not kinder.

The way out costs nothing extra this month

Take the first month's minimum — the payment you were going to make anyway — and simply refuse to let it shrink. A fixed $100/month clears the $5,000 balance in 11 years 9 months with $9,012.47 in interest, instead of 86 years and $47,151.74. A fixed $60 clears the $3,000 balance in the same 11 years 9 months with $5,407.48 in interest, instead of 59 years and $23,205.79. Even the "never" row yields: a fixed $200/month retires $10,000 in 11 years 9 months. Same card, same rate, same first payment — the only change is that the payment stopped shrinking. The credit card payoff calculator runs this comparison for any balance and payment, and how minimum payments are calculated explains the issuer formulas behind it.

The scale of it

This is not a niche problem. The same G.19 release puts total revolving consumer credit — mostly credit card balances — at $1.35 trillion (seasonally adjusted, June 2026, preliminary). Every dollar of it that belongs to someone paying only the minimum is running the arithmetic in the table above.

Journalists and bloggers: cite freely

You're welcome to cite or reproduce this table with a link to this page. The APR and debt totals are the Federal Reserve's; the payoff figures are computed, and every row carries a link that reproduces it, so you — or your readers — can check the math in under a minute.

Method and sources

The average APR (22.15%, credit card plans, accounts assessed interest, 2026 Q2 preliminary) and total revolving credit ($1,351.1 billion, seasonally adjusted, June 2026 preliminary) are from the Federal Reserve's Consumer Credit — G.19 release of August 7, 2026. Payoff times and interest totals were computed with the same payoff engine this site's calculators run in your browser, at a minimum of 2% of the balance with a $25 floor, recalculated monthly, no new charges. Rates change quarterly; the table reflects the release named above and will be updated as new figures land.

Sources

• Consumer Credit — G.19, August 2026 release (June 2026 data) — Federal Reserve Board: average credit card APRs and total revolving credit
• Consumer Credit — G.19, current release — the latest month's figures, wherever you're reading this from

This article is general information, not personalized financial advice. Your card's exact formula, floor, and rate are in your cardholder agreement and on your statement. How we write and review articles is covered in the editorial note on our About page.