Lost track of 2 cards this month....ugh....too many cards

[peaceonearth]

I am glad you were able to take care of it.

[Anonymous]

As long as it is fun, I guess it's OK, but doing all this tracking seems to me too much work.  

Obviously people have different preferences, but it also sounds like a large number of cards to be actively using.  For meeting minimum spend for bonuses, fine (but do MS for that!) but for category bonuses, I find that quickly suffers from diminishing returns: my nth card does indeed get 5% on this category rather than the default 2% I would get with Amex, but if I spend $10 a month in that category, that's an extra $1.20 a year, which may well not be worth the additional time.

I don't bother to spend on unused cards to keep them active, and that makes things easy as well.

[JenniferinFL]

I feel your pain, I manage my cards and my husbands cards and bills. It's a lot to remember! I've been burned on autopay too many times to trust it anymore. The worst one was a GMAC car loan that I had on autopay. There was some kind of issue where they took my car payment everyday for 4 days in a row and overdrafted my bank account. It wasn't a new loan either, I'd had it 6 months and it had always been on autopay. They took two weeks to send me the money back, I had a week wait to my next paycheck. It was a mild disaster. The worst of it was that I called them after it came off the second time and it still came off two more times.

I do have autopay set up on any cards with small balances/no balances; but anything where they could screw up and drain my bank account is not on autopay.

[adavis425]

I only have 10 to manage but could not even imagine doing so without autopay. I usually check my accounts daily and reconcile my spreadsheet, but all are set up to pay minimums in case I ever forget. Autopay is your friend. 

[maiden_girl]

Good you caught it quickly but I would cut down on using so many cards at one time. You can safely rotate two or three cards every other month. It takes months for a company to CLD or close your account for non-activity.  Actively manging 17 cards at a time just seems like more of a hassle than it's worth.

[OHWWCB]

This thread made me immediately go to most of my CC sites and set up auto payments. All but my Chase cards because I look at Chase either online or through my app at least once a day.

[mongstradamus]

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@OHWWCB wrote:

This thread made me immediately go to most of my CC sites and set up auto payments. All but my Chase cards because I look at Chase either online or through my app at least once a day.

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I just made an few payments on my CC just now , i didn't want to get caught when some of them were due when i will be out of the country 

[OHWWCB]

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@CreditMagic7 wrote:

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@Glkslngr wrote:
I by no means have as many cards as you, but I keep track of all my cards by switching them to the same due date and also keep track of those dates on my calendar. I am OCD and check my accounts about three times a day because I like to only carry a balance on one card, so that helps me also.

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That's the key! Sometimes as we move along forward the due dates can go all over the board. It's best to bring them into an order much simpler to deal with.

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But if you do this, which card are you supposed to use to make sure your cards report a $0 balance?

[capitalkid]

instead of making payment BY DUE DATE.  make your payment DAY AFTER CLOSING DATE.  

[navajomyst2003]

I have a spreadsheet.  excel is a wonderful tool.