The debt avalanche and debt snowball start with the same pile of $30,000, yet they attack it from completely different directions. One targets the highest interest rate first, while the other wipes out the smallest balance first.
Run the numbers, and the avalanche usually wins the cost contest. But debt repayment does not happen inside a spreadsheet. Research on actual borrowers suggests that closing individual accounts can create momentum that helps people keep going, which makes the cheaper strategy less useful if someone eventually abandons it.
