[cptacek]

I started doing the debt snowball when I first got a job and had a mortgage, 2 student loans, credit cards, a business loan and a truck payment. I paid off the credit cards and one of the student loans with any extra money I could find and just paid minimums on the rest. Then I started doing some amortization forcasts on all my debts and realized how powerful it was to pay extra principal on high interest loans. Now, I put all my extra money towards the highest interest loan.

I think that one of the overlooked purposes of the debt snowball is to simply get rid of a payment every month. If you are struggling to meet the minimum payments on 5 debts every month and one month happen to scrape together enough to pay the one with the lowest balance off, the next month you only have 4 debts to make the minimum payments on. So, if someone is struggling with cash flow every month, I would suggest to them to pay off lowest balances until they can comfortably make all minimum payments. Then, attack the highest interest rate.