Pretty much what Sythic said. Most loans seem to apply overpayments to the next month's or months' bill(s) unless you have arranged for overpayments to go to principle. If your overpayments go to principle, you'd still be on the hook for the next bill.
I've noticed with a few of my cards that if I pay twice before the next bill even cuts that my next bill will have a $0 minimum due. This happens to me all the time with USAA for some reason. Even when I carry a balance my minimum payments are almost always $0.
If they won't rearrange the application of your overpayments they may be willing to pause your payments due for a short time while you get sorted (while still accruing interest of course).
If this is a current situation I would recommend calling your creditors to see what they can do for options hypothetically - payment protections plans, etc. BUT don't tell them you've lost your job yet as there are some that freak out and will close your accounts and then all heck breaks loose. Just pretend you're one of those bored lonely folks that likes talking to CSRs and asking them every question you can think of about the weird things you read in your CC agreements (there's often options in there for some sort of protection plan for a small fee per $x amount of balance).
Good luck!
I've noticed with a few of my cards that if I pay twice before the next bill even cuts that my next bill will have a $0 minimum due. This happens to me all the time with USAA for some reason. Even when I carry a balance my minimum payments are almost always $0.
If they won't rearrange the application of your overpayments they may be willing to pause your payments due for a short time while you get sorted (while still accruing interest of course).
If this is a current situation I would recommend calling your creditors to see what they can do for options hypothetically - payment protections plans, etc. BUT don't tell them you've lost your job yet as there are some that freak out and will close your accounts and then all heck breaks loose. Just pretend you're one of those bored lonely folks that likes talking to CSRs and asking them every question you can think of about the weird things you read in your CC agreements (there's often options in there for some sort of protection plan for a small fee per $x amount of balance).
Good luck!
@Anonymous wrote:Say you've got a credit card with a monthly minimum payment of $50 or a loan with a monthly payment of $50. For the purposes of this discussion let's say they are at 0 interest (makes more sense with the CC, I know). If you are in the habit of paying extra, say $200 (4X minimum) for the sake of this discussion and all of a sudden one month you lose your job or for whatever reason know you can't make the $50 minimum, can you contact the creditor and have them change how a previous payment was applied... that is, apply less to a previous payment in order to apply more to a future payment? I say take interest out of the equation as that could throw off the numbers. Is this something that's a yes/no answer or would it vary by creditor/lender?
No, BBS I do not think they can do that. When someone pays extra it is applied to the principle, they can however move the due payment to the end of the scheduled payments to keep from showing a late payment. I have never heard of them doing more than 1 payment that way, but in theory they could. As a matter of a fact, my credit union allows shifting 1 monthly payment per year on all installment loans without penalty...they even advertise that feature on their loans. I know on a 0 interest loan there would be no interest anyway....unless you miss a payment, they will then go to the default interest rate. If I am not mistaken, by law, they can not remove previous overpayments to apply to future payments...even if they want to. They could if they wanted to, renew the loan, at the same terms as the previous loan and even get you some cash to make future payments if they wished to, but it would show up as a new loan. Could also do this...but no income could stop this.
