Five Months Of Doing It Right, Then She Quit: The Debt Avalanche Method That Survives A Year
Oonagh Trant started the avalanche in January and stopped in May. She had done it correctly: minimums everywhere, everything spare at the card charging twenty-two percent, and a spreadsheet she updated on Sundays.
By May the balance had come down by about a fifth and nothing else about her life had changed in any way she could see. She moved the spare money back to the smallest debt instead, cleared it in six weeks, and felt better for the first time that year.
The avalanche is the cheaper route and it is also the quietest. Ordering by interest rate means the first debt is frequently the largest, which means a year or more of correct behaviour with nothing to look at except a number going down slowly.
Being right is not the same as finishing
The arithmetic case for the avalanche is not in dispute and it is not the point. A method that saves four hundred in interest and gets abandoned in month five saves nothing, and the comparison people should be making is not between two schedules but between a schedule they finish and one they do not.
Oonagh had not failed at discipline. She kept it for five months, which is longer than most attempts last, and she stopped for a reason that is entirely rational: nothing had happened. Five months of correct behaviour had produced no event. Keeping the rate order and adding something that moves took about fifteen minutes.
The fifteen minutes that made the method survivable
Balances, rates and the amount genuinely spare each week, which was less than she had been putting in during the enthusiastic months and more than she had been putting in 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 went back to the rate order in July and is still on it. The part she points at is not the schedule. It is the small amount that stopped the method being entirely invisible.
The payoff ladder, in order
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.
The rung that mattered for Oonagh was the third, which is the one that costs money. That is worth being honest about rather than pretending the optimal answer and the survivable one are the same.
Why a shrinking number is not a reward
Because nothing arrives. A debt going down is the absence of something rather than the presence of anything, and absences do not register week to week. The snowball works for people precisely because clearing a small balance is an event, and events are what keep anybody doing something for a year.
The pairing is an attempt at both: keep the ordering that costs least, and put something small where you can see it, so the year has something in it besides 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
Order is the whole discipline: rates first, then what the ordering is worth, then something small outside it, then dates. Most people pick a method from an article and never do the second step.
What it costs next to the alternatives
Oonagh could have kept switching methods, which is free and had already cost her half a year of starting over. 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 putting money aside while in debt not simply 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 stayed with 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 question underneath is whether a cushion should come 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 depending on patience alone: every debt in rate order, the figure that ordering is actually 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.
What is the debt avalanche method?
Is the avalanche better than the snowball?
Why do people abandon the avalanche?
Can you invest while paying down debt?
What if the highest rate debt is also the biggest?
Is this financial advice?
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