Finance Basics: Avalanche or Snowball?

Which do you prefer, Avalanche or Snowball?

While I paid off my debt, I actually didn’t use either.  My first priority was to pay off any debts where someone could garnish my wages.  I had an unpaid tax with the IRS. That got paid off first.

Second to get paid off was the car loan. Not because it had the highest interest rate (it actually had the lowest) and not because the balance was the smallest (it actually had the largest balance of my debts).  The reason for paying it off next?  Because my car was the means of not only getting me to work, but also enabling me to handle caregiving for my Mother.  Caregiving is a lot more difficult if you don’t have a vehicle to drive the person being cared for around for appointments.

Once those two were done, I used the Avalanche and tackled the debt with the highest interest rate.