Not paying your credit card bill on time can greatly affect your credit score and cost you an additional fee. No one wants to be late on their credit card payment, but sometimes your mind is in a million places, and it slips your mind to perform the task. It is understandable, but there has to be ways you can avoid this mistake and save yourself from getting hit. Fortunately, there are some ways to ensure you pay everything on time.
Making a Budget
If you know your spending habits and incoming earnings, you can avoid being out of money in your checking account to repay the credit card bill. By keeping a written budget that has a plan for the money that comes in and how it will be spent, you will never run short of cash to pay your bills. Set parameters on your spending and assign money to your different needs and luxuries.
Keep a Track of Your Spending
Making a budget and forgetting about it will probably increase your chances of being late on your credit card payment. You have to keep tabs on how you are doing in accordance with the budget. Choose a system that you prefer to constantly monitor your spending. Different ways you can do that include holding onto your receipts, logging in to your online credit card database, or using one from hundreds of budgeting apps out there.
Employ Technology
Simply setting reminders on your phone or going online and subscribing to a reminder service from your issuer can make sure you get notified of the due dates every month. You can choose your preferred reminder to hit you up with a wake-up call.
Going Auto
Credit card issuers offer services for automatically deducting the due payments from your linked checking account. All you have to do is to subscribe to the service once and never have to worry about having to remember to pay your credit card bill on time again. However, you will still have to make sure that your checking account has enough money to pay it off when the due dates arrive.
Move Your Due Date
If the due date of your credit card repayment does not coincide with the date your income arrives, you can ask your issuer to move your due date. Most credit card companies allow you to select a date of your own liking, and it will solve your problem of not having enough money to repay.
Mark Your Calendar
Email services have calendars you can mark, and they will notify you with an email before or when the date arrives. If you like old-fashioned ways of doing things, you can use a paper calendar to mark your due dates too. The idea is to have a visual reminder that will prompt you for payment before it’s too late.
The Bottom Line
Frequently checking into your credit card account helps you to stay aware of where you stand in terms of your spending. The prominent display of “payment due” helps you to not get too forgetful of it. Remember, it is in the good interest of the issuers to receive timely credit card bill payments, so it is likely that they will assist you in every possible way to make things easy for you.
