What do you think about changing the credit card billing dates?

[Anonymous]

Hello all, I have been busy so I haven't been able to post as much, but now that it's time to pay my bills I had a thought. Having more than at least two credit cards started to get me confused and forgetful on which bill I had to pay. Of course, with today's technology I can just set an alarm or put it in my iphone calendar, but what do you think about changing the billing dates to synchronize each other? I aksed a friend and she told me that she actually did this in the past and it made her harder to pay the bills, because she had to pay them all by the same day.

Also, if I did end up doing this, how do I change it so it doesn't impact my scores? What I mean by this is I want to be able to pay the bills before they report to the credit agencies, so I how would I match that all up? I know that my discover and amex tells me my fico score, so do I just choose a date before the dates that show on my fico?

For example, " Your score is 732 as of September 18, 2015. So does that mean that they report on the 18th? 

I'm debating on wether I should do this or not.....to do or not to do.... hmmm... lol

[Pway]

With the changes of your due date you just have to remember the new statement cut date, so that it will not report a balance to the cb's.  Actually I just did this about three months ago.  I have three cards with Capital One and the due dates was all over the place.  I wanted things to be in line so I changed the due dates.  I am paid once a month so it was a tremendous help, I tell you it makes your life so much easier. 

[Anonymous]

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@Pway wrote:

With the changes of your due date you just have to remember the new statement cut date, so that it will not report a balance to the cb's.  Actually I just did this about three months ago.  I have three cards with Capital One and the due dates was all over the place.  I wanted things to be in line so I changed the due dates.  I am paid once a month so it was a tremendous help, I tell you it makes your life so much easier. 

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This is key. If you're paid monthly, you probably want them all (or most of them) due at once. If you're paid more often, you may want to time them somewhat to your pay schedule. I'm paid monthly at the end of the month so I try to pay pretty much everything the first week of the month. I have most of my cards set to close within the first 7 days of the month. I have a couple stragglers that I'm deciding if I like the staggered effect or not.

If I'm not worried about how much reports, this means I can potentially have a few cards reporting a little if I pay them on the first and they close on the 6th or 9th or something. And often one card still closing in the 20's that sometimes I pay down to $0 and sometimes I don't. 

[NRB525]

I have 24 cards in various states of activity:

2 closed on low APR, fixed autopay each month.

5 on low or 0% APR, also on fixed autopay that is significantly more than minimum. If I spend anything on these, I make a payment for that plus minimum to get it back to the offer APR.

10 to automatically either PIF "Pay it all" or fixed large amounts that may or may not see that much action in a month

7 cards that are relatively new or otherwise not on autopayment, though most will find an autopayment soon as they settle down from bonus spend gyrations.

The key is setting up autopayment so that the CCC takes the action to meet your minimum payment obligation This takes out the concern of missing payments.

And to prep for autopayments, it is important to slow cash spending for a time so that the cash flow is assured of being in the bank when any given autopayment arrives.

As to timing, I've never changed my card due dates, and they seem to be spread throughout the month. The longest gap is from the 28th to the 5th, though US Bank has been accellerating one to be on the 2nd, so I rarely go 5 days without seeing some new statement appear.

One advantage to this, in PIF mode, is that there's always a card available that just passed it's last statement, so any new charges will be 6 to 7 weeks before they are actually cash paid.

[Anonymous]

I have all 18 of my cards set with a due date of the 28th of every month. The key to doing this is to think ahead. Yes, as your friend says the cards are all due at once but nothing says you can't pay them before that, you just have to have it in your budget. What I like about this method is on the 27th of each month I can login to every single account and verify payment and I never have to worry about being late or missing something.