How to Manage Multiple Credit Cards At Once

The more credit cards that you have, the harder it is going to be to keep them all organized. Failure to keep your finances organized can lead to making late payments and going over the allotted limit on your cards. These things cause you to incur fees which can put you in a financial bind and make it difficult to continue making payments on any of your cards. This causes a vicious cycle in which you regularly rack up additional credit card debt that you can’t pay. It is imperative that you reduce the number of credit cards that you have and then keep organized records that will let you manage these cards and ultimately pay off your debt.

The first thing that you should do is to reduce the number of credit cards that you have by using balance transfers and debt consolidation credit cards. The goal that you should aim for at first is to reduce the number of credit cards that you have by fifty percent. If you have twenty cards, get it down to ten. If you have eight cards, get it down to four. Of course, make sure that you make smart choices about balance transfer rates and fees so that this consolidation doesn’t cost you too much.

The next thing that you’ll want to do is to create a spreadsheet on your computer that shows you all of the information about each card. It should include the following information:

- The name of the card

- The outstanding balance on the card

- The card’s credit limit

- The total available credit on the card

- The interest rate on the card

- The minimum monthly payment on the card

- The date payments are due each month

- Additional notes such as when low-interest rates are set to end and what they’ll be after that

You will use this spreadsheet to organize your payments as well as to start paying down on the debt. The first thing to do is to use the sort function on the spreadsheet to sort the information by the date that payment is due each month. This will clearly show you when you’re going to need to pay how much in order to avoid late fees. If possible, schedule your checking account to automatically make these payments for you so that there are no late fees. If not, print out a list of the dates that payments are due and the minimum payment due so that you can send the checks in a timely manner.

If the dates are varied and it’s too confusing for you, you can request that each credit card company change your payment date so that it falls on a specific day. Many people find that it’s helpful to schedule half of their payments due on the 1st and half on the 15th of each month to stay organized and keep in line with their incoming paychecks.

Once you’ve gotten monthly payments straightened out, use the information on your spreadsheet to see which cards should be paid off first. Those with the highest balances and those with the highest interest rates should take priority. Pay only the minimum on other cards while devoting extra money to paying off these cards one at a time.