Why I Am Considering Changing My Credit Card Due Dates
Have you heard this saying: cleanliness is next to godliness? Well forget that! Simplicity is key in my life these days. And it is the reason why I am considering changing my credit card due dates. I have talked about simplifying my life over the last few months:
Juggling a few jobs, small kids, and this hobby can get overwhelming. Because of that I need to find ways to trim the fat in my daily life. If I can become more productive, organized, and efficient then I can make things go a little more smoothly. Juggling 40-50 credit cards between myself and my wife is something where I think I can accomplish that.
Change Your Due Dates….Why?
When you have a portfolio of cards, or binder I should say, it can be a time suck making sure they are paid on time. I also need to be on top of when annual fees bill and if I want to keep them or not. And you know we are always adding new ones into the fold, hello World of Hyatt credit card ;).
After thinking of ways I can streamline my overall process I thought, why not have all my credit cards billing cycle end on the same date? That would make life a heck of a lot easier. My monthly run through checking the statements for each card to ensure nothing nefarious is happening would be a snap. The initial process could be a little time consuming, setting it all up, but after that life would be much simpler. That is the key word there!
After the dates were changed over, to say the 15th of the month, I could simply check all of my credit cards in one sitting. I could blow through them pretty quickly since a majority of them are with a few banks.
Conclusion
This may not be ground breaking stuff but it should shave some time off my process and that adds up. If I can find a few more places to trim the fat I can free up a few hours each week. A few sweet and precious hours of freeeeeeedom (imagine my William Wallace voice there).
Have you ever done this or thought about doing it? Let me know in the comments section.
 Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card is the old king of travel rewards cards. Right now
bonus_miles_full
Learn more about this card and its features!
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
I have a fall-back autopay set on every one. I link a couple of bank accounts to the cards. During the month, I may take a look at a bank balance that’s gotten disproportionately large and pay a bit mid-cycle from that account. But I know that, if I get busy or am traveling, the bill will be paid in full on the due date from the autopay. Helps me sleep at night.
I have all my accounts on autopay to pay full statement balance and just reconcile when I have time.
Same here! Set it and forget it! Mine are staggered all over the place and I know which part of the month to use which card so I can float purchases. Works great for the amount of MS I do.
I like all mine to close between the 12-18. It can be a little fuzzy. What I hate are those that have a payment within the first few days of the month and I always change them. We budget by month and I’m always reconciling everything in the first few days.
Personally, YNAB has been my life saver. And time saver. Now I find myself paying the cards mid-cycle since it is so easy. As long as the tracked payment amount matches the charge total on the card, I go ahead and pay it. Takes like 2 minutes.
I will have to check YNAB out – thanks!
I don’t want to go paperless , what is the best way to change the due dates of 5 chase cards to same day while also avoiding eyes on accounts ?
I was just going to secure message them. Not sure if that would put eyes on the accounts or not.
I did just that. The cards I use have the same statement date within a day of each other at most. Makes things so much more simple. Do it! Simple and easy to do and you will love the predictable patterns.
Nice!
I keep whatever due dates I get when I open the cards and I have them all on autopay so I don’t have to worey about them not being paid (statement balance every month). Then, you can set a date every month when you want to check all of them, regardless of the due date, then you can still catch if there is anything weird going on. I also set certain types of alerts for certain transaction amounts or locations and I get an alert if something doesn’t look right. I set a reminder on my phone’s calendar to tell me when a card id due for the annual fee with a note to remember of I should keep or not, or if I need to consider any changes. That works for me 🙂
Awesome! I do too many bank bonuses and have separate bank accounts for separate things that I don’t like the auto pay. I rarely pay from the same account month to month 🙂
I am starting to expand my number of bank accounts/bonuses. What I have learned is that some of them aren’t worth the time and effort as I need to connect all of them with my Xero accounting software and they don’t all work. Also, some banks have pretty poor user interfaces and money transfer capabilities. Any particular that you recommend?
I usually grab most of the nationwide ones and throw in some regional ones. Citizens Bank and Huntington are fairly easy if you have them in your area.
Thanks
I have my personal cards (bulk of spend) set for the 2nd (time for deposits on the 1st & end-of-month to hit) & the 22nd. AMEX & Chase personal
cards are separated into these 2 dates so I can float purchases if there’s a big item that could be paid by either. I use the 15th for biz cards.
Constant monitoring is the nature of this beast – the sooner you detect & communicate disputes/errors/missed payments, the better!
Seems like you have a good system in place Pam
I just keep track of due dates in Quicken. They are staggered somewhat so I can have some float if need be for certain deals or other reasons. Whatever works for each person though!
Sounds like a good plan – I used to put the dates on a spreadsheet but as cards came and went I got lazy and gave up on that lol
Keep in mind that Chase business cards don’t publish the statement until 2 days after the statement closes
I have never really noticed that. It did always seem to drag but I didn’t know it was 2 days…thanks for the tip
I leave all my due dates as they happen to fall, but I group them into two groups (first half of the month and second half of the month), and then divide those into “urgent to pay quickly” and “relaxed”. The “urgent to pay quickly” cards absolutely must be paid on the first or second day of the half-month (meaning, the 1st or 2nd, or the 15th or 16th), because they have a due date within 5 days. The “relaxed” group CAN be (and usually is) paid at the same time, but if I’m really busy, I can put those off a few extra days until I have time for sitting down and concentrating on it.
Basically, on most half-months, it means I sit down and pay all my bills at once, same as you (except twice a month instead of once)… but it means that I CAN stagger my payments (ie put off most for later in the period) if I wish. Nice mix of simplicity and flexibility.
Sounds like a good plan Jenny – thanks for sharing
I schedule statement cuts in batches so I will not be pressured to pay huge amounts at one time. I manage all our household CCs, 35 in all and I know exactly what cuts on the 2nd, 14th and 27th of the month. It works for me that our CitiDC cards don’t cut statement on the same day so I can continue to use the other two and keep on cycling them. Bottomline, we just have to find ways to streamline our payment system that benefits us most.
Very true – it won’t work for everyone
You can change the statement closing date by asking. You can also change the bill payment date. Amex default is 15 days after statement closes but you can adjust it anywhere from 15 to 25 days in your online account.
Have all my cards set to the same due date. Been doing it that way for years. When the statement comes (I refuse to do paperless statements) in I sit down and schedule the payment.
@ABC – The billing cycle may vary by a day or two do to holidays or weekends, but the due date NEVER changes.
I wasn’t aware you could change the billing cycle, just the due date. Or are we saying the same thing using different terminology?
if float is not an issue, it absolutely make sense. I set all mine on the 20th of the month and then on the first business day of the month I go down the line and pay off all cards. makes life much easier and not have to second guess whether I have paid. I then check back a few days later to make sure, and if I somehow missed one, I still have 2+ weeks to pay it off without incurring penalty.
Thanks. This makes a lot of sense.
Awesome JL
I like it. But be aware that some banks move the closing dates around so it differs from month to month by a day or two. Barclays B of A and Discover are consistent from month to month but Citi Chase and Amex change the dates on some but not all of their cards from month to month.
Good point ABC. Something to be aware of. As long as they where all in the same 3-4 day range it would be fine with me. I would just check them all on the 20th etc.
I have mine split into two cycle dates; simplicity and float spread. It makes life easier especially when I have to cover the hobby cards and the cards from the two actual businesses we have where everything has to be completely separate.
Sounds like a good plan Max!
The reason I leave mine staggered is to give myself the maximum float time possible for deals. I rotate spend between 5-6 cards and try to always use the one whose statement closed the most recently. If you have them all close at the same time you lose that ability
That is a good point James I would lose the ability to make purchases during the early parts of the billing cycle throughout the month. Something for big resellers etc. to consider and a reason they may not want to do it.
Better idea. Just pay it off as soon as the transaction takes place and then you don’t have to worry about changing the due date
I assume you are joking. Doing as you suggest would have the opposite effect as it would require ongoing attention as opposed to once per month.
Exactly that would only work if I was making one purchase per month per card.
I try to do it most of the time with multiple transactions. This way my balance stays way low and helps keep my credit score up
That is great if it works for you but that would be even more time consuming for me. You could just make one payment a few days before the statement cuts and accomplish the same thing.