topic Re: any advice on how to keep up with all my cards ..... in Credit Cards

any advice on how to keep up with all my cards .....

Anonymous — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 00:07:13 GMT

so i have around 15 cards and im having such a hard time maintaining them. i dont use all of them all the time. most are paid off but i do like to use them every now and then so they report on a consistent basis. what do you guys do to maintain them all? spreadsheet, phone app, ???

Re: any advice on how to keep up with all my cards .....

Anonymous — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 00:11:56 GMT

I personally use a spreadsheet, but there are some good apps that are out there.

Re: any advice on how to keep up with all my cards .....

Anonymous — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 00:12:33 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
so i have around 15 cards and im having such a hard time maintaining them. i dont use all of them all the time. most are paid off but i do like to use them every now and then so they report on a consistent basis. what do you guys do to maintain them all? spreadsheet, phone app, ???

Most people with a lot of cards either use a spreadsheet (you can either make one yourself or search on these forums) or use an external program like Mint to track card usage and payments. As a minimum you should set up auto payments on every card to ensure no late payments and check them each manually once a month to make sure payments are made and there are no fraudulent charges.

Re: any advice on how to keep up with all my cards .....

Gmood1 — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 00:28:45 GMT

Mint is my go to for keeping up with all of this stuff. Prism and Prosper daily are also pretty good.

Re: any advice on how to keep up with all my cards .....

AverageJoesCredit — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 00:47:49 GMT

Good ol' pen and paper(notebook) for this average joe. I got 17 credit accounts plus loans so not easy but since ive become" credit conscious" every 2- 3 days i set aside 10 minutes put on my beats and have a go at my accounts KISS method for me

Re: any advice on how to keep up with all my cards .....

wasCB14 — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 00:48:40 GMT

For me, it's more a matter of the number of websites/logins I need to use. I can access my 13 cards through 6 website logins, which is faster than needing 13.

Also, most of my cards have the same due date.

Re: any advice on how to keep up with all my cards .....

Anonymous — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 00:57:11 GMT

I use Wallaby to get a decent feel for where Im at.. but manually log into each account every Friday to check each account.. I PIF every other Friday.

Re: any advice on how to keep up with all my cards .....

NRB525 — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 04:27:45 GMT

I use a spreadsheet, since it allows one to list the cards in the rows, and then there is a large space to log payments / months in the columns. I update the list of "To Be Paid" column with orange highlight on the cells, then change the cell from orange when I've confirmed the statement and made sure the next upcoming payment is squared away.

But regarding the cards you have, many are store cards. If you aren't using them, to simplify, closing is an option. Unless they have particular rewards on items you'd buy every day, like Target, a store card is often more hassle than benefit, unless you shop there frequently.

Re: any advice on how to keep up with all my cards .....

Anonymous — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 13:37:07 GMT

I have all my cards closing on the same calendar date. Makes it a lot easier to handle.

Re: any advice on how to keep up with all my cards .....

happypill — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 16:35:25 GMT

I use a spreadsheet and also Mint. Also, I set every cad to automatically have the minimum payment paid on the due date; that way if something does happen to slip through the cracks, it will at least get the minimum payment.

Re: any advice on how to keep up with all my cards .....

Anonymous — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 16:43:15 GMT

Blispay doesn't offer the auto-pay option, but other than that, I set up auto-pay for all accounts.

Re: any advice on how to keep up with all my cards .....

kdm31091 — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 16:50:43 GMT

You can use a spreadsheet, or Mint, or you can close some accounts down according to your comfort level. Not everyone enjoys maintaining many accounts and everyone's tolerance level varies. But my opinion is that if you are stressing out or finding it hard to deal with, you should just close some. With 15 accounts, you definitely have room to trim and likely experience no credit score issues from doing so.

Re: any advice on how to keep up with all my cards .....

Anonymous — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 17:24:15 GMT

I would def close a few accounts. 15 is just crazy.

But like a poster said earlier, I have all my cards close on the same day.

Re: any advice on how to keep up with all my cards .....

Anonymous — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 19:04:21 GMT

Set up mint, virtually nothing competes with it, and it's safe. Secondly, set up all your cc accounts to fall in the same week. Mind you the hangar won't work for 1-2 billing cycles. I never set up auto-pay, but I also don't use more than 2-3 cards at a time (of the 25 I have)

Re: any advice on how to keep up with all my cards .....

Anonymous — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 19:06:39 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I have all my cards closing on the same calendar date. Makes it a lot easier to handle.

Exactly what I do...makes it a lot easier.

Re: any advice on how to keep up with all my cards .....

Anonymous — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 20:07:45 GMT

thanks guys. didnt know about moving my dates for them to be close to the same. i plan on getting rid of some cards. mostly the store ones. they were my first ones and its just feels weird to close them. definately going to use a spreadsheet.

Re: any advice on how to keep up with all my cards .....

Anonymous — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 23:42:12 GMT

I have everything on Mint Bills. Push notifications when new bills come up and everything in one place. I'm not so fond of regular Mint but Intuit bought out the product that is now Mint Bills but never changed it so I still use it (it used to be Check.me and before that it was Pageonce).

I've done billpay through it as well and it's relatively fast, but I usually just use it for an overview of what I need to pay and set up payments manually.

Re: any advice on how to keep up with all my cards .....

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Oct 2016 05:28:41 GMT

I just set up Mint as well. It's nice to have all my information in one place.

Re: any advice on how to keep up with all my cards .....

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Oct 2016 13:24:55 GMT

This is the first I've heard of mint. I'm going to check out that app.

But what I typically do is have a note sheet on my phone that lists balances and due dates ofy credit cards. It was definitely easier to remember dates when I had only two or three credit cards.

Re: any advice on how to keep up with all my cards .....

olehammer — Mon, 10 Oct 2016 13:41:33 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
This is the first I've heard of mint. I'm going to check out that app.

But what I typically do is have a note sheet on my phone that lists balances and due dates ofy credit cards. It was definitely easier to remember dates when I had only two or three credit cards.

I'm a huge fan of mint. Although I still login directly to my accounts on a bi-monthly basis at the very least. Sometimes the account logins on mint break even though you haven't changed your password. That can be annoying but it is a free service.