Run the arithmetic on a $5,000 credit card balance at a 22% rate, which is unremarkable these days. Interest alone runs about $90 a month. If your minimum payment is around $100, then roughly $90 of it services the interest and about $10 touches the balance. You paid a hundred dollars and moved the debt ten.
That's the whole trick of the minimum payment. It isn't designed to pay off the debt. It's designed to keep the account in good standing while the balance stays as large as possible for as long as possible. Follow the minimums faithfully and a mid-sized balance can take decades to clear, because the minimum shrinks as the balance shrinks, stretching the tail out year after year.
To be fair to the minimum, it has a legitimate job. In a brutal month, paying the minimum instead of your usual amount keeps you current without a late fee or a credit ding. As a floor for emergencies, it's a useful feature. As a habit, it's about the most expensive way to borrow money that's legal.
The simplest fix costs nothing extra today: freeze your payment at its current dollar amount. If the minimum is $100 now, keep paying $100 even as the statement asks for less. The card's own math works against the card once the payment stops shrinking, because every month a little more of that flat payment lands on principal, and the payoff date pulls in from decades to a few years. Add anything on top and it accelerates further. If you're juggling several balances, pick your order with snowball or avalanche and point the extra at one target at a time.
You may want to watch for this: as the balance drops, the card company will likely raise your limit or mail you checks. That's not a reward for good behavior, it's an invitation to refill the balance you just drained. Decline it. And once you've felt how much power there is in redirecting interest back toward your own balance sheet, that idea scales up well past credit cards. Our sister site Dynamic Banking is built around exactly that principle.