bank rates credit cards insurance finance calculators

Pay Your Credit Card Bills on Time!

I recently missed a payment on my American Express credit card—not because I wanted to carry a balance, but simply because I forgot. I’ve been moving lately and I forgot to change my address that I have on file with them.

Anyways, this was the first time I carried a balance on my bill, and it was sure a wake up call.

The APR on my debt was over 15%, and this isn’t even that bad compared to the bad credit credit cards that charge over 30% APR. Unfortunately, the balance I carried was pretty high, so next months bill is not going to be nice.

Lesson from this is to pay your credit card bill on time! NEVER let yourself get sucked into debt!

Comments (7)
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (12 votes, average: 3.33 out of 5)
Loading ... Loading ...
7 Existing Comments

Add New Comment

  1. James said:
    on July 28th at 06:05 am

    That happened to me. I remember after I got married that I was very heavily in debt (the last time I’ve been so heavily in debt). I had charged an awful lot of the honeymoon on to my credit card. Although my bank usually paid off my balance automatically, because I had a heavy overdraft I asked my bank to only make the minimum payment that month. Then I saw the interest that I paid – $80 in one month!

    Looking back on it it was probably one of the cheapest and most effective lessons that I’ve ever learned. It was supplemented by the bank “forgetting” to put back my automatic full payment the next month (they had my current account, credit card and overdraft). I now knew where my bank made its money.

  2. gkr said:
    on August 18th at 09:07 am

    As the business of credit cards issuers is to make money they apply late payment charges. The late payment charges may vary with card or may be around $30. You can check this in the terms and conditions of your card. Evidently over and above this late payment charge, there wil be interest rate applied on the whole balance every month. It adds like an explosion.

    The aftermath of late payments will generally be the increase in the credit interest rates on the future debts that we may take. WIth online facilities to pay the bills it is easy to neglect the payment till the last date. We do no t know that we will not get carried away by some other business so easily and end up in paying just after the due date.

    So it is always better to take a day before the due date to pay all the credit card bills.

  3. Latryce Stafford said:
    on March 26th at 06:48 am

    Help me get my credit togather and better so i can by a home. be able to get a new car.

  4. Latryce Stafford said:
    on March 26th at 06:50 am

    Get my credit back on track. i would love to buy a new home. purches a new car.

  5. Latryce Stafford said:
    on March 26th at 06:53 am

    be able to have a good credit card that i can use and dont have to have four or five diffrent credit cards.

  6. Mrak said:
    on June 8th at 11:37 am

    If you ever have to let some balance slip buy, there is a trick that I learned. We pay our CC bills in full each month. Being a work traveller, I get reimbursed, but sometimes late.

    So I carry a few cards to have the amount I charge to be spread across those cards, instead of it all being on one card.

    Why, because it will save you lots of money if you ever have to have a balance rollover. So lets say you spend $6000 in one month, but you can only pay say $5500. Well the Credit Card company will not charge the percentage against the $500 difference, they will charge against the average daily balance, which is definitely going to be more than $500 and could be even over $5000.

    So if I split that $6000 in three, so each card has $2000, then I can pay two of them off, and only have one that maxed up to $2000 that will charge on the average daily balance, which could only be as high as $2000, so a good amount less charge for the balance rolled over.

  7. Ramvie said:
    on April 5th at 11:36 pm

    I also fall on debt 10 years ago because I don’t pay on time, but now I learned my lesson and live on cash not on debt.

© 2010 Bankrate, Inc., All Rights Reserved.
privacy policy - terms of service - contact us - affiliates - press