topic Re: I am 30, 60, 90 days late all the time. My payments are never late. My secret. in General Credit Topics

I am 30, 60, 90 days late all the time. My payments are never late. My secret.

Anonymous — Tue, 22 May 2007 19:10:17 GMT

I am going to share my secret for perfect on time payments while being late all the time. This works for people with 1 to 50 even more credit cards.

To start off, I am far from perfect. With around 20 credit cards I always forget to make payments, sometimes I even forget that I have a credit card and skip 2 or 3 months of payments. It is especially difficult when I carry balances on all at the same time. On top of that I have many other bills that keep me busy making payments all weekend long. I've learned years ago I just can't do it.

People have many credit cards for many reasons. Easier to track false charges by placing fewer transactions per card, business use, or they have neg activity that they are trying to drown out with pos history. What ever their reason we all still have to make the same on time payments. It is hard enough to handle 4 or 5 credit cards, imagine around 20 or more cards with balances.

You can enter them all in to your computer on a spread sheet or database. But I've done that. And some how my database got corrupted and a few accounts disappeared and I forget to pay them. Surf was really great one month. I spent every day on the beach after work, with the excitement I again missed all my bills not even opening up the envelopes. Oh my gosh. You would think my credit would be down the toilet by now. It's not. It is clean. But for someone like me to have clean credit I had to learn what is Full Proof, Bullet Resistant, Somewhat Risky, and Just Doesn't Work for me.

1. What doesn't work for me is simple. Remembering to pay on time. I have too many bills to be able to do that. Even saying to my self if I use this card now, I will send a payment in after each charge. Yea, I forgot to do that too because something always comes up.

2. Somewhat risky. Banks offer an automatic service called Bill Pay with checking accounts. This service is great for most people. Not me. While you may forget to make a payment the auto Bill Pay sends in the same amount every month. But then you are sending in money on cards that may not have a balance. And I for one, don't want to do that. And most of all Bill Pay is not 100%. If your banks computer goes under maintenance for a few days your payments can be LATE. And you are responsible! Even worst, Bill Pay can pay your bills in full. Sounds great, but what if you don't have enough money in the account.

3. Bullet Resistant. Find credit card companies that take the responsibility on them selves to ACH DEBIT the money from your account. If their system goes down and no payment is made, they are late not you.

4. Full Proof. Same as Bullet Resistant except you have a second separate checking account where you keep a "specific" amount of money in. This money is only for credit cards. This money is not for paying the account in full but only the MINIMUM PAYMENT. Set up your credit card account to take the minimum payment incase you (like me) forget to pay. Keep track of this checking account and always keep it at your specific $$ amount. I keep $500 in my checking account for credit card minimum payments. I check it every weekend and move money in to this account when ever it goes below $400. The extra $400 is more than I need and well in my safety margin. I like having more than I need in case I also forget to watch this checking account, yep that sounds like me. Credit card companies do make mistakes and say it is your fault. In this case you can say it was their responsibility and you could not have had anything to do with it.

BE CAREFUL. When you enter your routing and checking numbers include all the "0's" before your account numbers. This can cause rejected payments if they are missing.

Just because you have automatic minimum payment set up, still send in or make your regular payment when the bill comes. This backup plan is not for paying bills. It is solely for a backup. You still need try and pay them. Paying more than minimum payment improves your credit score and it is just good sense.

And only use cards that allow you to set up automatic ACH Debit for minimum payments. I was loosing sleep worrying about paying bills. Knowing its automatic, lets me live my life credit-worry free. And my credit score reflects this. I am a good credit risk because I know I can't make on time payments but instead I set up this method to do it for me.

WARNING!! When you set up Automatic Minimum Payments, it can take time to kick in. Do not use your credit card until you confirm with the credit card company it is Active on your account. Watch it the first month to make sure it is working properly, if no payment is made when you expect it, call the next day to check up. Once it's going, you can relax for years.

Here is a few companies that do automatic minimum payments. You can do the same with loans, ect. Citibank, Chase, Bank Of America, National City, Discover, FIA

Banks that do not offer it as of today 5/22/07
American Express
Avanta

There are many more that do, I just can't think of them right now.

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Now that you have your credit cards pulling minimum payment to prevent lateness. Set up with other bill collectors to bill your credit cards not you. This means you will have less bills to worry about. Oh boy, all I need is every bill coming to my house, I can't keep up with what I have now. Sending bills to your credit card(s) is a great idea if you are the type of person like me forgetting to pay on time. Using your credit card is better than your checking account BECAUSE if a bill collector takes the wrong amount you can easily dispute it. Then you can joke about, oops I forget to pay this again. Remember even if you miss a payment, when you remember even if the minimum payment was made, send in or make your own separate payment.

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I never think "well, I will make enough money in a few months to pay it back." If I don't have it now, I don't charge it. I don't use charge cards to borrow money I can't pay back today if I needed to.

And that's my secret to my perfect payment history. :-)

Re: I am 30, 60, 90 days late all the time. My payments are never late. My secret.

Anonymous — Tue, 22 May 2007 19:15:24 GMT

I've got to say, 20 CCs would drive me nuts. I'm planning on stopping at around six.

But you're right insofar as scheduling an automatic payment. That really is a helpful tactic. But it isn't truly foolproof, and here's why:

Most CC companies will not accept a payment that is over the balance owed. Say you have a balance of $8 with that as the payment due. You have an automatic payment of $15 scheduled. But since $15>$8, the payment gets rejected.

I am nitpicking here. Automatic minimum payment is a great idea, and I use it on my cards.

Re: I am 30, 60, 90 days late all the time. My payments are never late. My secret.

Anonymous — Tue, 22 May 2007 19:30:22 GMT

I think you are slightly mistaken.

I do something similar to this, and for argument sake I am not going to mention what it is. However I go down -100 on my credit cards and they accept it fine.

Most of them have a clause that says u can not pay more then 10-20% of the total credit line, they will just pay u back the difference.

But ummm yeah so thats cool just wanted to note that

Re: I am 30, 60, 90 days late all the time. My payments are never late. My secret.

Anonymous — Wed, 23 May 2007 03:02:21 GMT

FWIW, some CCCs won't let you make more than one payment within a certain period of time. I think Discover requires individual payments to be 3 days apart, or something like that.

Message Edited by masdeocho on 05-22-2007 11:02 PM

Re: I am 30, 60, 90 days late all the time. My payments are never late. My secret.

Anonymous — Tue, 22 May 2007 19:42:49 GMT

I was trying to show people the differences and ultimately show why having the credit card companies take responsibility is best. This does not take away the need to make payments, but rather allow someone to be late as often as they like. Thanks. I'm trying to give back for all the help I received here. :-)

Re: I am 30, 60, 90 days late all the time. My payments are never late. My secret.

fused — Wed, 23 May 2007 00:04:36 GMT

I am just curious, why sooo many cards? Never heard of someone having that many. Is this common and I have my head stuck in the sand? I have:

Amex Blue

Amex rewards gold plus

FIA Plat Visa

Macys

Visa Gold (my bank)

Its challenging for me to stay on top of these five. How can you handle it?

Re: I am 30, 60, 90 days late all the time. My payments are never late. My secret.

Anonymous — Wed, 23 May 2007 02:22:57 GMT

@fused111 wrote:
Its challenging for me to stay on top of these five. How can you handle it?

I have a card for, fuel, insurance, food, repairs, ect. Then there are the 0% apr offers; love those! But for the most part, credit cards not only give me everlasting low aprs they also give up to 5% cash back or a wopping discount in some of my favorite stores. I had a car loan at 9% and got tired of paying interest so I moved it to a few credit cards at 0%. If you have enough cards you can have 0% for the rest of your life! I never touch cash. With the exception of the car I always pay the bills in full.

Message Edited by ilovepizza on 05-22-2007 07:22 PM

Re: I am 30, 60, 90 days late all the time. My payments are never late. My secret.

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 15:31:53 GMT

20 cards all with balances, would you mind telling your scores?

Re: I am 30, 60, 90 days late all the time. My payments are never late. My secret.

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 17:04:11 GMT

Between DH and myself, we have 15 CC....I have all in 1 folder under favorits. I pay all my bills online. And I bank online. Every week I open each CC and pay amount due when it appears (even if partial pmt) I have been very lucky doing that as every CC will accept multi pmts a month. If you get into the habit of doing this even if you know that 1 CC has been paid, You are never late I even open CC that I know has been PIF.

I never use auto payment!!!

I also have another folder under bank and bills. It contains auto,mortag,elect,oil,ins, etc all housewhole bills........I go down the list & pay when due.

To do this you must open everything at 2 times a week I do this as I want to see that payments are showing.That way no missed payments!

Doing this does not take much time at all.

I also keep a log of payments.