easyMcalc

Monthly instalmentsMethod checked 10 September 2026

Debt consolidation calculator

An estimate from the figures you enter. Not advice, and not an offer from any lender. How the payment is worked out

Payment after consolidating $341.36/ a month Full schedule

What you owe now
Fill in as many rows as you have debts and leave the rest empty. The payment is what you actually pay each month now.
The consolidation loan
Taken out of what the lender advances, so a fee leaves you short of clearing the debts by that much.

Consolidating, against keeping things as they are

Payment after consolidating $341.36 / a month

Paying now, a month
$475
Clear as things are
6 years and 10 months
Interest as things are
$9,686.76
Payment after consolidating
$341.36
Clear after consolidating
5 years
Interest after consolidating
$4,781.30
Amount borrowed
$15,700
Arrangement fee
$471
Actually advanced
$15,229

It also saves $4,905.46 in interest overall, which is the case worth having: a lower payment and a lower total together.

The fee comes out of what the lender advances, so $471 of the old balances is not covered. Either borrow that much more or find it elsewhere, because a consolidation that leaves a balance behind has not consolidated anything.

This assumes the old accounts are closed and stay closed. Consolidating and then using the cards again is the common way this ends up costing more than doing nothing, and no calculator can model it.

What clearing the debt costs

A bar splitting $20,481.30 into 2 parts, each labelled with its share.

  • The debt$15,70077%
  • Interest$4,781.3023%
Everything paid until the balance is gone, split into the debt itself and the interest on top.

Two questions, and most calculators answer only one

Consolidating debts into a single loan almost always lowers the monthly payment. That is what it is sold on and it is usually true, because the new loan is written over a longer term than the debts it replaces.

The question that matters as much is what it costs in total. Stretching the same balance over more months means paying interest for more months, and a lower rate does not automatically make up for it. A page that shows the new payment and stops has answered the easy half.

So this one shows both, side by side, and says in words which way each went. Sometimes the answer is that consolidating is straightforwardly better. Often it is that the payment falls and the total rises, and that can still be the right decision if the lower payment is what makes the plan survivable. What it should not be is a surprise.

What the comparison assumes

Keeping things as they are means every debt running on the payment you make now, with nothing rolling over when one of them clears. That is the conservative baseline and it is what actually happens to most people: a card that clears frees up money that goes somewhere else. Rolling the freed payment into the next debt is a better strategy and it belongs on the debt payoff page, which is built for it.

The consolidation side is one fixed-rate loan for the whole of what is owed, repaid over the term you choose.

The fee comes out of the money, not the balance

An arrangement fee is generally deducted from what the lender advances rather than added to what you owe. Borrow exactly the total of the debts and the fee means you end up short by that much, with a small balance left on an old account at its old rate.

It is a small thing that undoes the whole exercise, so the page shows what is actually advanced next to what is owed. Either borrow the extra or plan to find it.

The part arithmetic cannot see

The comparison assumes the old accounts are closed and stay closed. A consolidation loan that clears three cards, followed by the cards filling up again, leaves you with the loan and the cards, which is materially worse than having done nothing at all.

This is the most common way consolidation goes wrong and no calculator can model it. It is worth being honest with yourself about before signing rather than afterwards.

Common questions

Is this the same as a loan consolidation calculator?

Yes. Debt consolidation and loan consolidation describe the same act, and this page answers both. Student loan consolidation in the United States is a different and more specific thing, with its own rules, and is not what this page models.

Why does my total interest go up at a lower rate?

Because the term got longer. Interest is a rate applied over time, and adding years can outweigh a lower rate. The page prints both totals so the trade is visible rather than assumed.

Should I consolidate?

It helps most when the new rate is much lower than the old ones, when the term is not much longer, and when the accounts being cleared are closed for good. It helps least when it is used to make an unaffordable situation feel affordable for a while.

What about a balance transfer instead?

A promotional balance transfer can beat a consolidation loan outright if the balance is cleared before the promotional rate ends, and is usually worse if it is not. That is a different calculation with a cliff in the middle of it, and this page does not model it.

Is anything I type stored?

No. The calculation happens on the server as part of rendering the page, nothing is written down, and the access log for this site drops the query string precisely so that the numbers you enter are never recorded.

Sources

Both sides of the comparison are arithmetic on figures you supply. These are the documents that define the rate this page does not quote.

How the payment is worked out

Keeping things as they are runs every debt on its own payment, with nothing rolling over when one of them clears, which is the honest baseline. Consolidating is a single fixed-rate loan for the whole of what is owed, on the same integer schedule every loan page here uses.

The fee is taken out of the advance rather than added to the balance, which is the convention used across this site. Where a lender adds it to the loan instead, put the total of debts plus fee into the balances.