topic Re: Cheap Service that Bills Regularly? in General Credit Topics

Cheap Service that Bills Regularly?

Anonymous — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 01:50:37 GMT

I'm looking for ideas on a service that bills something cheap- think $5 per three months or something- just so I can keep a card or two active without having to think about it much. MyFico service is fine, but $15/month is too much for me to throw to a $0 balance card.

Any ideas?

Re: Cheap Service that Bills Regularly?

Anonymous — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:15:33 GMT

Netfix. $10 per month

Re: Cheap Service that Bills Regularly?

MarineVietVet — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:29:25 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I'm looking for ideas on a service that bills something cheap- think $5 per three months or something- just so I can keep a card or two active without having to think about it much. MyFico service is fine, but $15/month is too much for me to throw to a $0 balance card.

Any ideas?

I use most of my cards to pay monthly recurring expenses that have to be paid in some fashion anyway. Using my cards for this shows activity and is very simple and easy.

I think my smallest monthly charge is about $16 for XM Radio.

Re: Cheap Service that Bills Regularly?

Anonymous — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:32:53 GMT

Netflix, duh. <facepalm> We already have that comming out of checking! EDIT: This means I can't believe I didn't already consider this...

So Marine, this is a good practice in general, assuming we PIF every month? (Given the expected balance reporting, etc)

Re: Cheap Service that Bills Regularly?

MarineVietVet — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:34:44 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Netflix, duh. <facepalm> We already have that comming out of checking!

So Marine, this is a good practice in general, assuming we PIF every month? (Given the expected balance reporting, etc)

What I do is pay in full as soon as the charge shows online and before the statement even posts. That way the accounts alway show a zero balance.

Re: Cheap Service that Bills Regularly?

Anonymous — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:45:28 GMT

@MarineVietVet wrote:

What I do is pay in full as soon as the charge shows online and before the statement even posts. That way the accounts alway show a zero balance.

Makes even more sense.

So the plan is to set up a small recurring monthly fee on "unused" cards in a way to give me enough time to PIF before the balance reports. Genius.

Re: Cheap Service that Bills Regularly?

MarineVietVet — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:50:11 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Makes even more sense.

So the plan is to set up a small recurring monthly fee on "unused" cards in a way to give me enough time to PIF before the balance reports. Genius.

It works very well for me. After a few months it will become automatic and second nature remembering which cards charge what and when the charges go through.

Re: Cheap Service that Bills Regularly?

jdogi — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 02:05:49 GMT

MarineVietVet, do you know if constant $0 balance reporting to the CBs would cause am account to be considered "active"? I've read that FICO 8 reduces the weight of accounts that are not recently active. It's just not really clear to me if I need to let a balance report every once in a while to make that happen.

Thanks,

jdogi

Re: Cheap Service that Bills Regularly?

MarineVietVet — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 02:28:20 GMT

@jdogi wrote:
MarineVietVet, do you know if constant $0 balance reporting to the CBs would cause am account to be considered "active"? I've read that FICO 8 reduces the weight of accounts that are not recently active. It's just not really clear to me if I need to let a balance report every once in a while to make that happen.

Thanks,
jdogi

In my mind there are 2 types of "activity".

1. Activity that satisfies the credit card company. You can accomplish this simply by charging something every 2-3 months. In this scenario the CCC's don't care whether you always have a zero balance or not. An occasional charge is quite enough for them.

2. Activity that makes scoring happy. This means not going too long with a zero balance. If you go too long of a time (How long is too long?) then for scoring purposes the account might be considered dormant even though it is actually still open and active.

Plus as backwards as it seems if all your revolving accounts show a zero balance your score will suffer just a bit.

By linking my cards to recurring expenses I avoid these possible problems.

Re: Cheap Service that Bills Regularly?

Revelate — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 22:11:05 GMT

@jdogi wrote:
MarineVietVet, do you know if constant $0 balance reporting to the CBs would cause am account to be considered "active"? I've read that FICO 8 reduces the weight of accounts that are not recently active. It's just not really clear to me if I need to let a balance report every once in a while to make that happen.

Thanks,
jdogi

Payments and potentially high balance over the statement period are reported. Even exact dates as well as a few other metrics for that matter though our own resolution of what's reported to the bureaus is admittedly fuzzy. If you're using the card for a recurring bill, the bureaus, vis a vis FICO, can determine that regardless of whether you let a balance report or not.

They'll also see though you're not using the card very heavily .

Re: Cheap Service that Bills Regularly?

MarineVietVet — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 22:26:12 GMT

@Revelate wrote:

Payments and potentially high balance over the statement period are reported. Even exact dates as well as a few other metrics for that matter though our own resolution of what's reported to the bureaus is admittedly fuzzy. If you're using the card for a recurring bill, the bureaus, vis a vis FICO, can determine that regardless of whether you let a balance report or not.

They'll also see though you're not using the card very heavily .

As always YMMV but in my experience this hasn't caused any problems at all. I charge the same boring $16 for XM Radio every month and have done so for years with no hint of an AA. The same for my cable bill and DSL service each month. The amount is always the same but the CCC's seem happy enough.

Re: Cheap Service that Bills Regularly?

Revelate — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 23:01:47 GMT

@MarineVietVet wrote:
@Revelate wrote:

Payments and potentially high balance over the statement period are reported. Even exact dates as well as a few other metrics for that matter though our own resolution of what's reported to the bureaus is admittedly fuzzy. If you're using the card for a recurring bill, the bureaus, vis a vis FICO, can determine that regardless of whether you let a balance report or not.

They'll also see though you're not using the card very heavily .
As always YMMV but in my experience this hasn't caused any problems at all. I charge the same boring $16 for XM Radio every month and have done so for years with no hint of an AA. The same for my cable bill and DSL service each month. The amount is always the same but the CCC's seem happy enough.

Yeah I wouldn't expect it to be much of a problem if any. Certainly in my case I just dump recurring bills on cards that I'm not actively using.

It's likely more of an underwriting concern anyway: in looking at my Experian report, with very few additional items which they're well within their rights to request on a mortgage at least, an excrutiatingly detailed financial picture could be pieced together for me with some very easy assumptions (such as I have an auto loan, ergo I must have car insurance, and based on my FICO score and the amount of debt, even a rough estimate of my insurance payment could be made).

Re: Cheap Service that Bills Regularly?

Anonymous — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 01:12:45 GMT

So after moving some things around, I've implemented the following approach, with my three open CC accounts:

1) Oldest Cap1 (750 CL, no rewards)- Just Netflix at $10 or whatever. PIF, to report $0 balance

2) Rewards Cap1 (750 CL, 1% cash back)- Cable, Cell Phones, and Internet (total ~240/month). PIF to report $0 balance

3) Chase Freedom (1500 CL, 1-5% cash back)- Daily expenses (gas, groceries, and entertainment), keep a balance of ~$100 reporting

On #2, I decided to move all auto-pays here, because I _loathe_ an auto-payment account hitting our checking account. It's always made me nervous! My thought here is, after we no longer need "optimal" balance reporting, we just make a single monthly payment to the card to cover all bills, and a balance may occasionally report.

Also, if a company improperly collects an auto-pay (i.e. afetr we cancel the account, for example), we have better odds of disputing with a CC methinks.

Anyone see holes in this, aside from general credit card management risks?

Re: Cheap Service that Bills Regularly?

Revelate — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 01:40:09 GMT

I think that's just fine: as a matter of fact it's what I'm doing other than I don't worry about my revolving balances much when I'm not applying for anything as long as I can pay them off and get the updated balance to report pre-application... also because I have a 19.35% auto-loan that really deserves the large chunk of my free cash flow as the interest charged is so much higher (by an order of magnitude) than anything else I have currently.