Two payoff strategies dominate debt advice, and the right one depends more on your personality than pure math.
The avalanche method has you pay minimums on everything except the highest-interest debt, which gets all extra payment until paid off, then moves to the next-highest rate. Mathematically, this minimizes total interest paid — it is the objectively cheapest method.
The snowball method has you pay minimums on everything except the smallest balance, regardless of interest rate, which gets extra payment until paid off, then moves to the next-smallest balance. This costs slightly more in total interest but creates faster visible wins, which research on behavior change suggests helps many people actually stick with the plan.
If you have historically struggled to stay motivated on long financial goals, snowball’s faster psychological wins may outperform avalanche’s lower total cost in practice, even though avalanche wins on paper.