I see. In that case, I should set up auto pay the statement balance but from a savings account, which always have enough money to pay, instead of a checking account.
I think with this method, I don't have to worry about not having the funds in my checking account, and this will avoid to manually pay, even once a month all my 10 accounts.
@villemiami wrote:I see. In that case, I should set up auto pay the statement balance but from a savings account, which always have enough money to pay, instead of a checking account.
I think with this method, I don't have to worry about not having the funds in my checking account, and this will avoid to manually pay, even once a month all my 10 accounts.
In that case, just make sure your savings account does not have a monthly limit to withdrawals, or you could start seeing a lot of charges.
Generally, I believe banks do prefer that you use checking acccounts rather than savings for paying bills, since that's kind of their primary purpose — although they started with using mailed paper checks, the modern ACH system is still based on paying monthly and other payments as "checks", just electronically.
Almost all banks' autopay setup favors the method of setting your statement balance to pay in full each month, resulting on one-month no-interest float. This implies to me that it's the way they'd prefer that you pay, and it's certainly the simplest method. It's what I do and I just track the upcoming autopay date on a spreadsheet and make sure I've got the funds in checking by that date to cover it.
Finally, I second setting a good five or six days autopay date in advance of the actual due date, since if anything were to go wrong you've got lots of time to see it before there's an actual problem.
So I never addressed your original question — I suspect your score variation will be minimal. With my (admittedly thick) profile, I hover between 2% and 3% utilization using monthly autopay statement balance, and I see my FICO scores bounce between adding or losing 1-4 points. For Vantage scores, make that around 10 points. In short, I wouldn't worry about it.
@FicoMike0 wrote:Nearly all banks report the balance that the account posts with. If your statement balance is $500 with a cl of $1000, your utilization is 50%. If you pif 6 days before the date, util is still 50%. One exception is that Chase will report anytime you pif, bringing util to zero. This is important if you wish to avoid all zero penalty.
US Bank - last day of the month reports, nomatter when the statement closes.
@Gregory1776 wrote:
@FicoMike0 wrote:Nearly all banks report the balance that the account posts with. If your statement balance is $500 with a cl of $1000, your utilization is 50%. If you pif 6 days before the date, util is still 50%. One exception is that Chase will report anytime you pif, bringing util to zero. This is important if you wish to avoid all zero penalty.
US Bank - last day of the month reports, nomatter when the statement closes.
Last business day of the month. Weekends and holidays are not included.
I called Wells Fargo and they told me that there is no fee if I use my Savings account to pay for credit card bills.
I prefer an automatic system because I pay 10 credit cards for me, and 4 for my 90 year old mother (I have power of attorney), so it would save me much time over a year.
For each credit card, it's possible to add a savings account in Auto-Pay.
