Changing your CC Due Dates

[Anonymous]

Wolf started to mix me up as well, but he is getting a bit technical.  Basically you can sync up your statement dates.  However, different CC companies have different due date/grace period policies.  Even though the law specifies 21 days for due dates, some card issuers give you more time.  I find 25 days to be fairly typical.  As such, if you sync up the statement closing dates, your due dates might be different.  Wolf pointed out correctly that I used the term grace period, which is incorrect as some SUB SUB prime cards have no grace period (ie interest charges start immediately), instead of using due dates which the law requires to be at least 21 days.

[Anonymous]

BTW, for those who are trying to manage reported utilization, statement dates are more important to sync up as this is when they pay their outstanding balance so the reported amount will be what they want them to be.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Wolf started to mix me up as well, but he is getting a bit technical.  Basically you can sync up your statement dates.  However, different CC companies have different due date/grace period policies.  Even though the law specifies 21 days for due dates, some card issuers give you more time.  I find 25 days to be fairly typical.  As such, if you sync up the statement closing dates, your due dates might be different.  Wolf pointed out correctly that I used the term grace period, which is incorrect as some SUB SUB prime cards have no grace period (ie interest charges start immediately), instead of using due dates which the law requires to be at least 21 days.

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Are you sure? I was under the impression that the Credit CARD Act of 2009 mandated >=21 day grace periods where interest cannot be charged no matter what, as long as you pay in-full by the due date. However, if you make a partial payment, they can still charge you interest retroactive to the date of purchase. At least this is my understanding of the law.

Yeah, 25 days seems to be the typical grace period for my credit cards. I'll probably end up syncing my due dates since that matters more to me than the statement date for utilization purposes. I don't think the statement dates will differ by more than a couple of days in my case, so I'll just tell myself PIF by the 1st to minimize utilization, pay by the 7th no matter what. The only downside is that I'll see a spike in withdrawals from my checking accounts all on the same day, but I'm thinking it's easier to manage things that way.

[Anonymous]

To be more technical, here is the law.

a) TIME TO MAKE PAYMENTS.— A creditor
may not treat a payment on an open end consumer credit plan as late for any purpose, unless the creditor has adopted reasonable procedures designed to ensure that each periodic statement including the information required by section 127(b) is mailed or delivered to the consumer not later than 21 days before the payment due date.
‘‘(b) GRACE PERIOD.— If an open end
consumer credit plan provides a time period within which an obligor may repay any portionof the credit extended without incurring an
additional finance charge, such additional finance charge may not be imposed withrespect to such portion of the credit extended
for the billing cycle of which such period is a part, unless a statement which includes the amount upon which the finance charge for the period is based was mailed or delivered to the consumer not later than 21 days before the date specified in the statement by which payment must be made in order to avoid imposition of that finance charge.’’.       

Note: that we were both partially correct.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Are you sure? I was under the impression that the Credit CARD Act of 2009 mandated >=21 day grace periods where interest cannot be charged no matter what, as long as you pay in-full by the due date. However, if you make a partial payment, they can still charge you interest retroactive to the date of purchase. At least this is my understanding of the law.

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I believe that Reg Z of Card Act only specifies that 21 days are provided by card issuer to receive and review bills and make payment.  IE. They can't have due date before 21 days.  I don't think this covers whether or not they can charge interest from time of purchase as most cards do with cash advances or BTs.  In fact, I believe one of the secured cards mentioned earlier, Applied Bank, is one of those 0 day grace period cards.  So Reg Z prevents charging things like late fees etc before 21 days, but not the grace period.  Personally, I made the same mistake of confusing due dates with grace periods as I have never dealt with 0 grace period cards.

[Anonymous]

In practice, if there is a grace period, it is the due date, since both have to adhere to the 21 minimum limit.   See law in my earlier post.

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[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

Are you sure? I was under the impression that the Credit CARD Act of 2009 mandated >=21 day grace periods where interest cannot be charged no matter what, as long as you pay in-full by the due date. However, if you make a partial payment, they can still charge you interest retroactive to the date of purchase. At least this is my understanding of the law.

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I believe that Reg Z of Card Act only specifies that 21 days are provided by card issuer to receive and review bills and make payment.  IE. They can't have due date before 21 days.  I don't think this covers whether or not they can charge interest from time of purchase as most cards do with cash advances or BTs.  In fact, I believe one of the secured cards mentioned earlier, Applied Bank, is one of those 0 day grace period cards.  So Reg Z prevents charging things like late fees etc before 21 days, but not the grace period.  Personally, I made the same mistake of confusing due dates with grace periods as I have never dealt with 0 grace period cards.

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Got it. That all makes sense. I guess it's just hard to wrap my head around the idea of no grace period. 

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

In practice, if there is a grace period, it is the due date, since both have to adhere to the 21 minimum limit.   See law in my earlier post.

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I imagine some shady CCC has already figured out having a 21 day grace period, followed by a due date a few days later in order to catch some last minute payers off-guard.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

In practice, if there is a grace period, it is the due date, since both have to adhere to the 21 minimum limit.   See law in my earlier post.

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I imagine some shady CCC has already figured out having a 21 day grace period, followed by a due date a few days later in order to catch some last minute payers off-guard.

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Doubt it, since I expect someone here would bring it to the forums attention.    The sub primes have plenty of other ways to take your money

[Anonymous]

As a side note, I moved my Cap1 due dates to four days earlier, and it skipped an entire billing cycle.

But like the above posters noted, the statement date is really the key. Moving the due date, in my experience, moves the statement date by roughly the same magnitude.