Applying for a credit card is not an act that should be entered into casually. Long after the joys of your purchases have faded, your credit card balance would remain. Sooner or later you’ll need to assess your financial situation and decide on a debt reduction program to clear off your credit card balance.

A credit card interest calculator is a handy way to calculate how much you would have to pay to clear your debt in a certain amount of time. There are several credit card interest calculators on the internet.

The following may be useful to you.

The Bankrate Credit Card Calculator
The Bankrate calculator allows you to plug in the number of months in which you want to clear your credit card balance and shows you how much you need to pay off.

Alternatively you can enter the figure you currently pay to your card and the calculator would tell you in how many months your card would be cleared.

It would have been helpful to have at least an estimated breakdown of how the payment would be split between capital and interest, but I guess this information should be on your monthly credit card statement.

The Motley Fool Calculator
Being a bit more advanced, the Motley Fool credit card interest calculator makes allowances for the credit card annual fee within the calculation. Once you plug your figures in, you can view a graph of the total interest you would pay as well as the repayment period based on the changes in your monthly payment.

There is also a table showing how your payment would be split between interest and capital. Two tables are shown, one for the minimum payment and one for the payment amount needed to repay the balance in your requested number of months.

The Credit Federal Calculator
This calculator is quite basic and does not allow you to get a result without entering a monthly payment figure. So if you want to know what your monthly payment would be in order to repay your balance in 12 months you would need to enter different figures by trial and error until the calculator shows the period you require.

Also be careful not to hit ‘enter’ when you plug your figures in, this will take you back to the start. After you enter your numbers you must click ‘calculate’ to get your result.

The Govan Law Center Calculator
To get your result on this credit card interest calculator you need to know the following information:

• Card balance
• Annual interest rate
• Minimum payment percentage
• Minimum payment

The third and fourth figures can be taken direct from your credit card.  This is normally in the fine print and reads something like ‘your minimum payment will be 5% of the balance or £10, whichever is higher’.

Once these figures are entered and you click compute, you are given the interest charges, the number of payments and total years to repay your debt.

If you wish you can enter the payment you want to pay in the minimum column to get a more realistic result.

When deciding upon which credit card interest calculator to choose, factor in how complex your information needs might be, and based upon that information one of the calculators above would definitely meet your needs.