<prompt> Human: My wife and I have been just staying afloat among something like 15,000 of credit debt acquired through a combination of my previous credit irresponsibility and when my father started getting sick and we bought a bunch of stuff to help him in his last few months. We currently have a loan on a car that will end in March of 2018 if we continue to make regular payments on it and were starting to get real serious about killing off some of our credit cards.I learned about the concept of debt snowballing a few years ago and Im ready to really start doing this, and my best estimates for our tax return next year shows that well get enough back to completely pay off the remainder of the car loan and then some. The car payment is the largest monthly payment we currently make and has a much lower interest rate than any of our credit cards.Even considering the practice of debt snowballing, does it make sense to take this opportunity to wipe away this loan? After paying it off, Id be putting what Id normally pay on the car towards the lowest balance credit cards, then keep ramping up payments as we wiped away cards. Or should I be starting from the bottom up regardless, focusing on my credit cards starting with the lowest balance and working up? I figured getting rid of this car loan was a smart idea especially when my wife agrees with me, and according to her smart ideas from me dont happen too often but wanted to throw the question out there to the community to confirm. Reg. car payment: 230mo - current bal. 3872 Edit: Interest at 6.99 Credit Payments: approx. 400mo Split up 6 currently with balances, min payments 25, 25, 27, 40, 61, 215 mo Other mortgage, utilities, gas, insurance, etc. - approx. 1600mo Income 51kyr 1 child Est. return next year approx. 4-4.5kTL;DR: Car loan ends in just over a year but we have lots of credit payments too; kill car loan with upcoming tax return then put what wouldve been the regular car payment towards snowballing payments against credit? Or is this a bad idea?Edit: Balances and Interest Rates Best Buy - 829.99 - 25.24 Home Depot - 495.42 - 25.99 Care Credit - 394.38 - Currently 0 until August of next year, then upd to 29 Chase - 550 - Currently 0 until April, then upd to 15? Bank of America - 2,800 - 14.24 This has been in this state for nearly 10 years :- Capital One - 9,508.59 - 14.9Edit: Thanks, everyone! uwijwijwij provided the exact tool I needed to figure this out. I understand the jist is to kill higher interest cards first, but Ive done the math out on this, and here are my findings:Note: The below assumes this all happens today. I did use the tool to differentiate snowball vs. avalanche payments; the difference, in my situation, was negligible. Technically avalanche will save more on interest, but not by much, and Im willing to eat the small difference.Snowball payments with no special action: Debt eliminated in 37 months 4,473.54 paid in interest First balance killed after 10 monthsSnowball payments using tax return to kill lowest balance cards:The four lowest cards are Best Buy, Home Depot, Care Credit, and Chase. Debt eliminated in 31 months 3,102,81 paid in interest First balance killed after 18 monthsSnowball payments using tax return to kill the auto loan WINNER: Debt eliminated in 28 months 2,782.91 paid in interest Lowest cards killed at 2, 4, 5, and 7 months  <response>: Assuming your interest rates are higher on the credit cards, I would start with the lowest balance credit card and snowball through those before the auto loan.If its quite a but higher balance than the car loan I dont think so based on your number of cards and total cc debt, you could do the auto loan for the mental boost first.Either way youve got the right idea, and make sure youre growing your emergency fund to help prevent this in the future, never ending debt sucks. 