If you have ever googled "how to pay off debt", you have met the two celebrities of personal finance: the avalanche and the snowball. Both work. They just work on different parts of you.
The contenders
- Avalanche — pay minimums on everything, throw every spare rand at the debt with the highest interest rate. Mathematically optimal. You pay the least total interest.
- Snowball — pay minimums on everything, attack the smallest balance first. When it dies, roll its payment into the next smallest. Psychologically optimal. You feel wins early.
A real-world example
Take a fairly typical debt load for a young professional:
- Credit card: R28,000 at 21%
- Personal loan: R45,000 at 24%
- Store account: R7,000 at 23%
- Overdraft: R5,000 at 19%
With R3,500 a month beyond minimums, the avalanche (personal loan first) saves roughly R6,000 in interest versus the snowball, and finishes about two months sooner. That is real money — but it is not life-changing money.
What is life-changing is actually finishing. And here the snowball has a dirty secret advantage: killing that R5,000 overdraft in six weeks feels incredible. Momentum is a financial instrument.
Our honest recommendation
- If your rates are wildly different — say a 28% store card next to a 12% car loan — respect the maths and go avalanche.
- If your rates are within a few points of each other, go snowball and buy yourself the motivation.
- Whichever you pick, automate the attack payment the day after payday. A strategy that depends on month-end willpower is not a strategy, it is a wish.
The rule that beats both
Never, ever finance a lifestyle upgrade while you are attacking debt. The avalanche and the snowball both melt in front of a new car payment.
The best payoff method is the one still running in month nine.
Khaya's debt planner runs both methods against your actual accounts and shows you the payoff date for each — so you can pick with your eyes open.
