How do you guys manage so many cards?

[Beast26]

It would help if you guys with 10+ credit cards give us tips on how you stay on top of you payments and keep so many cards up to date.  I plan on having about 7 and while that's not a lot Its quite a few for the average person.  Do you guys use autopay for all your cards to ensure that you never forget a payment?

[Anonymous]

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@Beast26 wrote:

It would help if you guys with 10+ credit cards give us tips on how you stay on top of you payments and keep so many cards up to date.  I plan on having about 7 and while that's not a lot Its quite a few for the average person.  Do you guys use autopay for all your cards to ensure that you never forget a payment?

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I have 11 now, started collecting last summer. I use 4 religiously for different cashback and have recently decided for mortgage reasons to pay off 3 of them.

I set monthly alerts for 2 days prior to due date and would pay each balance down a certain percent between the 4 cards. The other 7 I have random things billed to each month and have autopay setup for each account. Each charge is netflix, hulu, my mothers phone, kids gizmo watch through Verizon, data on Google, and another subscription for a game I play. So biggest charge is $37 and smallest is $.99.

[Dalmus]

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@Beast26 wrote:

It would help if you guys with 10+ credit cards give us tips on how you stay on top of you payments and keep so many cards up to date.  I plan on having about 7 and while that's not a lot Its quite a few for the average person.  Do you guys use autopay for all your cards to ensure that you never forget a payment?

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 Many of us have created Excel spreadsheets of varying complexity to help give us a quick visual of where we are with our cards.

I posted mine some time ago.  It requires some manual entry, but I like that because it forces me to actually look at each account at least once a month to verify nothing strange is going on.  You can see it in this thread:

https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Personal-Finance/Bill-Pay-Spreadsheet/m-p/5175829#M21932 

Feel free to take it an customize it or use ideas from it to create your own.

Others use apps like Mint or Prism.   You'll find as many different methods as there are people who respond to your question.

[wasCB14]

Payments are pretty simple. Since closing Cap1 after some SUB chasing, Chase is the only issuer I have that doesn't offer ebills.

[GApeachy]

1. Autopay  (yes)
2. List cards in order of Due Date

[Brian_Earl_Spilner]

Spreadsheet

[notmyrealname23]

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@Beast26 wrote:

It would help if you guys with 10+ credit cards give us tips on how you stay on top of you payments and keep so many cards up to date.  I plan on having about 7 and while that's not a lot Its quite a few for the average person.  Do you guys use autopay for all your cards to ensure that you never forget a payment?

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Mint, mobile apps, and a decent number of them are sock drawered for chunks of time except for "oh, the rotator is good" or "they're a special bonus", or "gotta buy a pack of gum or a beer so they won't cancel the card".

I'll be honest though, I'm getting to a point of "I want to refine what I carry and use, maybe just swap some, with maybe some but not a lot of occasional, light churning" mode rather than "I want more cards" mode. There's a concept called the Pareto principle where once you get to "pretty good" the last bit to "really good" is the hardest to hit in terms of effort (and doesn't yield easy wins the same way the jumps from "not good" to "pretty good" got you).

For instance, if I start going into the Chase UR or Citi TY ecosystem I'm probably dumping some AMEX cards just because the cards start becoming rapidly duplicative for benefits, and I am paying hundreds of dollars for cards I can't optimally use. I'm also reaching a conclusion that airline cobrand cards won't work for me for ongoing spend, and are only for churns or benefits (and since I don't like airline lounges enough to pay hundreds of dollars a year for them without a lot of other benefits, I don't often travel with a companion, and I don't check bags, the benefits often don't work)- and a lot of churning with airline cards pretty much precludes going into the Chase ecosystem very fast (or at all).

I see the travel bloggers talking about all their cards (like 20+)... then I see the posts about how they used their free night certificate at a $80 airport hotel because otherwise they'd lose it... and I'm mindful of things like that.

[mkhan1093]

I have 19 active cards atm, some SD'd, some used every day as I see fit for categories, spend thresholds, etc.

Here is how I manage everything:

1) Autopay full balance on every card the day before the due date so I don't have to think and I can catch any errors in time

2) I have both email and push notification alerts for every card for any purchase over $0.00 (i.e. every purchase) that way I know my intended transactions go through and I can catch fraud

3) Simple spreadsheet that has the balance to be paid every month

4) Card Pointers app is a gift from heaven

[NoHardLimits]

Spreadsheet, yes.  Autopay, no.  I have also adjusted my due dates to fall into two monthly groupings.  That way, I only need to do my online payment activity twice a month.

[Anonymous]

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@NoHardLimits wrote:

Spreadsheet, yes.  Autopay, no.  I have also adjusted my due dates to fall into two monthly groupings.  That way, I only need to do my online payment activity twice a month.

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Autopay (statement balance on due date) yes, spreadsheet no, for me!   It really depends.   My spend is low enough that I know I can PIF on every card, so autopay is good enough.  I don't care much about score, CLI, APR reductions etc, so nothing to track.  If any of those things aren't true, a different solution is needed.

Basically I am in the position where I have better things to do with my time than track credit card usage, like posting to a credit card forum.

Let's check my sheet, 2 days 5 hours since I posted about Amex, OK, better start a new thread.....