I'm a pretty stupid spender. From personal experience, I find the snowball method is satisfying when, for example, you have 3 maxed-out high-interest CC's and 1

I'm a pretty stupid spender. From personal experience, I find the snowball method is satisfying when, for example, you have 3 maxed-out high-interest CC's and 1 has a low max and probably the lowest of the interest rates (a difference of maybe 3%). But if there's a huge difference in interest rates, with the right numbers in your face, it's pretty easy to see how wasteful it can be. When I'm in payoff mode, I usually roll everything up in a spreadsheet and focus only on watching the total debt drop while paying the min on everything but the highest interest. A few other numbers I like to look at are lower % used credit and higher available credit, all the same numbers really, but it's satisfying to watch them all change, so I put them in the sheet. Obviously I can't completely hide the real numbers from myself, I keep them in a different tab. Another mental factor I don't see mentioned often is the availability of the credit you payoff. If I put $1000 towards a CC that money is easily available if I need it. If I put $1000 towards one of those cards that can only be used for dental work, which are often the kind that have the highest interest rates, then that money is pretty much gone.