Here is what I do:
1. Never use store cards. You wind up with too many cards to keep track of, and you WILL forget.
2. If you HAVE to break rule #1, to get a large discount say, then pay it off at once. Don't let it ride until the statement cuts. You WILL forget.
3. Set up autopay on all your cards BUT treat it is as a fallback -- try and pay in full before autopay cuts. One day it WILL fail.
On the two cards that I use all the time I have TWO autopays running. I have a push payment from my bank that runs $100 into both cards every month on statement cut date. Then I have the card's own autopay pull the full balance from my bank on the due date.
Why two? Because if one fails I don't get hit with a late payment. The $100 push payment is much less than I owe BUT it is going to be more than the minimum payment due. If the main autopay fails, worst case, interest on the difference between what I owed and $100. But no hit to my credit history.
I have the autopay run against an account linked to a line of credit. My goal is not to use that line of credit, to have the funds I need in place to pay my balance in full BUT if I ever do my sums wrong and don't have enough in the account to cover the credit card then it just runs the line of credit down. Again, the penalty for a mistake is interest charges on that PLOC, not a ding on my credit record.
Fingers crossed, this has kept me from missing payments due to my own mistake or somebody else's. I don't trust autopay AND I also don't trust my memory to be flawless. I have a system in place that allows a mistake here and there WITHOUT resulting in a missed payment.
