Four reasons you should pay more than the minimum payment

Minimum payments are designed to keep you in debt. Here's how to get beyond them. 

When the bills come in, do you pay the minimum amount due for each, and think you're being financially responsible as long as you make those payments on time?

Well, you're not. Those minimum payments are actually one of the insidious ways creditors keep you in debt if you let them. "But they want to get paid back, don't they?" you ask. No, they do not. They want to keep making money off the interest you're paying them for the longest time period possible.

If it's the best you can do, making minimum payments is still better than not paying anything. That could cause your case to get sent to a collection agency, which is much worse than dealing directly with your creditors to work out a better repayment plan. But beyond that, making only minimum payments ultimately hurts you.

Read on to learn about how those minimum payments get calculated, the effects they can have on the total amount owed and on your credit score, and ways you can pay more than the minimum.

Minimum Payments Are Designed to Keep You in Debt

The minimum payment due on your monthly statement actually represents the lowest amount the bank or lender will accept on your credit card, car loan, student loan, personal loan, or mortgage loan balance. Do the math on a few of your bills: most minimum payments equal around 3% to 5% of the total amount owed.

And thank goodness for current federal guidance! They stipulate that the minimum amount due must include the interest plus any fees, as well as a small portion of the principal balance.

The minimum amount due must include the interest plus any fees, as well as a small portion of the principal balance.

Before that federal guidance went into effect, minimum payments did not have to cover all the fees and interest, or any of the principal balance. So, these unpaid fees and interest amounts would keep adding to your monthly balance, causing it to rise continually — a problem called negative amortization.

Paying the minimum may not send you into the hole anymore, but it's still difficult to dig yourself out of debt when you're mostly paying interest and fees.

Paying the Minimum Makes Debt Cost More

When you only pay the minimum, you are paying so little toward the principal balance every month, you're actually increasing the amount of time you're in debt. This increases the time you'll keep making interest payments, which causes the total amount you're paying to grow.

Using a simple car loan calculator, just look at the difference in interest paid on a $25,000 car loan at 3% interest when the term is 60 months, compared to a 72-month loan:

• 60-month loan: Payments are $449 per month and $26,953 total (or $1,953 more than the loan amount).
• 72-month loan: Payments are $380 per month and $27,349 total (or $2,349 more than the loan amount).

SEE ALSO: 7 Ways to Save Money When Buying a New Car

Do you really want to pay nearly $400 more for a car because you opted for a longer loan? The car finance company will point out the lower monthly payments — like they're doing you a favor — when you're really just buying a car you can't afford.

The longer you take to pay off any kind of debt, the longer lenders are charging you interest and laughing all the way to the bank. This is especially true for long-term debt, like student loans and mortgages.

In fact, there's an interesting warning in large, black-and-white letters on Capital One credit card statements: "If you make only the minimum payment each period, you will pay more in interest and it will take you longer to pay off your balance."

Paying the Minimum Destroys Your Credit

Paying your bills on time represents a big portion of your FICO credit score. That's why you might think you're protecting yourself by making those minimum payments each month. But another big factor in your credit score is your amounts owed, and your credit utilization plays a big part in that. Credit score models analyze how much credit you have used, compared to how much credit you've been offered, and they like to see that ratio below 10%.

Just paying the minimum balance on your credit cards keeps your credit utilization high, which lowers your credit score.

Just paying the minimum balance on your credit cards keeps your credit utilization high, which lowers your credit score.

Poor Credit Impacts an Auto Loan

Experian Automotive's 2015 research into the auto-lending industry found that borrowers with a good, or prime, credit score (661-780) paid an average interest rate for a new car of 3.67%, while those with nonprime credit scores (601-660) paid 6.49%. The research also found that nonprime and subprime borrowers (with even worse credit scores) were more likely to take long-term loans than prime or super prime borrowers.

SEE ALSO: The Skinny on Credit Scores: 10 Signs That You're a Credit Superstar

Using that same $25,000 car scenario from above, here's how a lower credit score can hurt your interest rates and increase the overall amount you'll pay back:

• Prime credit: A $25,000 car loan at 3.67% interest results in payments of $457 per month for 60 months, for a total of $27,402 paid (or $2,402 more than the loan amount).
• Nonprime credit: A $25,000 car loan at 6.49% interest results in payments of $420 per month for a 72 months, and a total of $30,249 paid (or $5,249 more than the loan amount).

That's a big difference, right?

Those with super prime credit scores (781-850) pay even less, while those with subprime credit scores (501-600) and deep subprime credit scores (300-500) can expect significantly higher interest rates — up to 14% for new cars and up to 20% for used cars, according to the Experian.

How to Pay More Than the Minimum

The common advice is to never to carry a balance on a credit card and always pay off balances before their due dates, completely avoiding minimum payments. If that's not possible, throw anyamount more than the minimum toward your balance to chop it down faster.

Consider making bimonthly payments for mortgage loans, for an automatic extra payment every year that will shave thousands off your overall amount paid over 30 years.

If you get a tax refund (and already have some emergency savings), put it toward your high-interest student loan debt or high-interest credit card debt to reduce your balances by a large chunk. Orconsider the debt snowball method.

The sooner you pay off any balance, the less you'll pay overall, the better credit you'll have, and the better rates you'll get for borrowing money in the future.

This article first appeared in DealNews.