Do you ever toy with the idea of paying off your credit card debt slowly rather than paying your balance off in full? It can be appealing. After all, someone’s giving you what feels like free money to go out and buy what you want right now even if you can’t afford it right now. As long as you make minimum payments each month, they’ll be happy and all will be right with the world, right? Not quite.

Have you ever really thought about how much your credit card debt would actually cost if you paid it off slowly? How long it could take might surprise you. The amount of interest you’ll pay over time could downright shock you. Don’t give the credit card companies the upper hand. Before deciding to settle into long-term credit card debt, consider the following question:

Is any purchase worth a lifetime of debt?

A lifetime of debt could be precisely what you’re in for if you pay only your minimum payments on your credit card debt. While you can certainly minimise the damage by paying more of your debt off each month, let’s take a look at a worst-case scenario and what different current debt levels could actually cost you before they’re paid off.

In this example, let’s pretend you have a credit card that charges 17.99% interest on purchases, like the Woolworths Everyday Money card. Because you’re carrying a balance, you also won’t be eligible for any interest free days. For the sake of simplicity we’ll also assume that there are no special introductory rates factored in and that you won’t be using the credit card for any new purchases while paying off the credit card debt.

The chart below looks at four debt levels and shows you what the first minimum payment would be (assuming 2% minimum payments — this will vary from one bank to another), how long it would take you to pay off the debt in full by making only the minimum payments, and the total amount you would have paid at the end of that period after interest is factored in.

* The information in the table above was obtained using the FIDO Credit Card Calculator from the Australian Securities & Investments Commission.

As you can see, even relatively small debts can lead to you paying a huge amount of interest (nearly doubling the cost of your purchase in this case). Before deciding to use your credit card to finance a major purchase over time, use FIDO’s credit card calculator to find out exactly what that purchase would really cost you in the long run. Then ask yourself: “is it worth it?” If you can pay it off quickly, it very well might be. But if you’re expecting to pay it off making the minimum payments you might still be paying off that sweet new purchase long after it’s obsolete and for far more than it’s really worth.