Oonagh Trant began the avalanche in January and stopped in May. She had done it right: minimums everywhere, every spare pound at the card charging twenty-two percent, a spreadsheet updated on Sundays.
By May the balance was down about a fifth and nothing else about her life had visibly changed. She moved the spare money to the smallest debt instead, cleared it in six weeks, and felt better than she had all year.
The avalanche is the cheaper route and the quietest one. Ordering by rate usually puts the largest debt first, which means a year or more of correct behaviour with nothing to look at but a number falling slowly.
Being right and finishing are different things
The arithmetic case for the avalanche is not disputed and is not the point. A method that saves four hundred in interest and gets abandoned in month five saves nothing. The comparison that matters is between a schedule you finish and one you do not.
Oonagh had not failed at discipline. Five months is longer than most attempts last, and she stopped for an entirely rational reason: nothing had happened. Five months of correct behaviour had produced no event. Keeping the order and adding something visible took about fifteen minutes.
The fifteen minutes that made it survivable
Balances, rates, and the amount genuinely spare each week – less than she had been putting in during the keen months and more than by May.
What came back · in about fifteen minutes
which debt first and what the ordering is worth against the alternative. Seeing the figure made it easier to stay with, and it was smaller than she had assumed.
a few pounds a week going somewhere other than the balance. Mathematically this costs a little. It is the reason the other fifty weeks happen.
when each debt clears at her real spare amount rather than her optimistic one. The first date was further out than she wanted and closer than she had feared.
two lines a week. It sounds trivial and it is the only visible thing in a method that otherwise produces nothing to see for a year.
She returned to the rate order in July and is still on it. What she points at is not the schedule but the small amount that stopped the method being wholly invisible.
The payoff ladder, rung by rung
Rung 1 · List every debt with its rate – not its balance. The rate decides the order and the balance decides how long it feels, and confusing the two is how people pick the wrong method for the wrong reason.
Rung 2 · Find out what the ordering is actually worth – sometimes it is hundreds and sometimes it is thirty. If the gap between the two methods is small, the one you will finish is simply the better one, and knowing that removes the guilt.
Rung 3 · Keep something small outside the debt – a few pounds a week. It is suboptimal on paper and it is the difference between twelve months of this and five, which is not a small thing to weigh against a few pounds of interest.
Rung 4 · Put dates on the schedule – a method with no dates is a direction. A method with a date for each clearance is something you can be ahead or behind on, and being behind is survivable in a way that being nowhere is not.
For Oonagh the decisive rung was the third, the one that costs money. Worth being honest about that rather than pretending the optimal and the survivable answer are the same.
Why a falling number is not a reward
Because nothing arrives. A falling debt is an absence rather than a presence, and absences do not register week to week. The snowball works precisely because clearing a small balance is an event, and events are what keep people going for a year.
The pairing attempts both: keep the ordering that costs least, and put something small where it can be seen, so the year contains more than subtraction.
- Every debt listed with its interest rate
- The saving from rate ordering worked out, not assumed
- A small amount kept outside the debt each week
- A date against each clearance
- A visible weekly log
- Choosing a method before knowing what the gap is worth
- Putting every spare pound at the debt and nothing else
- Judging five months of correct behaviour as a failure of discipline
- A schedule with no dates in it
- Assuming the optimal method is the one you will finish
The order is the entire discipline: rates, what the ordering is worth, something small outside it, then dates. Most pick a method from an article and never reach the second step.
What it costs next to the alternatives
Oonagh could have gone on switching methods, which costs nothing and had already taken half a year of restarting. Here is how the usual routes compare with working the order out once.
| Approach | Cost | What it does about finishing |
|---|---|---|
| Pick a method from an article | Free | A rule, with no idea what it is worth for you |
| A spreadsheet you build yourself | Free | Correct arithmetic, nothing to look at for a year |
| Free debt advice service | Free | The right call for arrears or collections, and genuinely free |
| Debt-Friendly Investment Plan | $29 | The rate order, what it saves, and something visible beside it |
“Is saving while in debt not just wrong?” On the arithmetic alone, at a high interest rate, yes – every pound not sent at a twenty-two percent debt costs you something, and this article is not going to pretend otherwise. The argument is that a method abandoned in month five costs more than a few pounds a week of suboptimality, and that is a judgement rather than a calculation. Two things worth saying plainly: where there are arrears, defaults or anything in collection, this is the wrong order of priorities entirely and free debt advice comes first – StepChange and Citizens Advice in the UK, and the equivalent services elsewhere. And investing carries risk including the loss of money, rates and terms differ by lender, and nothing here is financial, debt or investment advice.
Two more who kept the rate order
“I had assumed the avalanche would save me a fortune and that was why I had to grit my teeth through it. The actual difference was under sixty pounds, which made choosing the one I could stick to an easy decision.”
Caolan B. · four debts, Spokane WA
“Everything I read said put every spare penny at the balance, so that is what I did for four months. Keeping five a week somewhere visible is the only reason I am still going eleven months in.”
Eibhlin M. · eleven months in, Erie PA
If the real question is whether a cushion comes before the debt at all, the $500 Emergency Fund Roadmap deals with that order. Results vary; this is general guidance rather than financial advice.
Fifteen minutes, and the method stops running on patience alone: every debt in rate order, the figure that ordering is really worth, a date against each clearance, and something small enough to be suboptimal and visible enough to carry the other fifty weeks. The arithmetic was never the hard part.
*Individual results may vary.
