Avoiding Fees Caused By Those Sneaky Delayed Charges
Sunday, January 20th, 2008One of the biggest causes of fees on credit cards happens when you make a purchase and the store fails to charge you for the purchase immediately. You forget that you already used that money and make use of the card again for a different purchase. This causes you to go over your credit limit and accumulate fees. You want to blame the store for failing to process the charge in a timely manner but the truth is that you’re better off accepting responsibility for the problem yourself. This allows you to take charge of your spending and avoid those fees. After all, you can blame the store all you want but they aren’t going to make the payment for you.
The most important thing that you can do to avoid these fees is to keep organized records of what you’ve spent on each of your credit cards. You should create a spreadsheet in your computer which shows how much of a balance you have left on each card that you carry. Then make sure to get a receipt for every purchase that you make on the card. Set aside a time of each week to enter those receipts into your spreadsheet so that you are always aware of what you’ve spent. Instead of relying on your credit card company to have accurate information about your spending, you can count on yourself to know what kind of balance you have left to use.
Of course, these problems are avoided entirely when you don’t run high balances on your credit cards. Try to make sure that you always leave yourself several hundred dollars of credit on any given card so that you don’t go over your limit. If you must run high balances, try to consolidate your debt so that one of your cards has free credit. You may be using the high-balance cards because they have low interest rates but this doesn’t help you if you’re going over the limit. Leave the high-balance cards at home and use the low-balance card to make any purchases that are required. This lets you avoid fees without having to keep such a strict eye on what you’re spending.
Another thing that you can do is to make sure that you use cash for expenses at smaller, non-chain stores. Big companies run their purchases through the system fairly quickly. Smaller companies and mom-and-pop stores may not run their transactions as often. You can avoid fees by not using your card at places like these. If you see them get out the manual credit card machine that transfers the numbers to a carbon copy paper, go to an ATM and get out cash instead! Take responsibility for your spending. Paying less in fees means having more money to have fun with!
