Introduction
About 3 months ago, I went to a Nieman Marcus in New Orleans, and put my purchase on my NM credit card. I hadn’t put a charge on this card for over 2 years probably. I had set autopay up for the card years ago, but I had closed that checking account over 2 years ago as well. And to make matters worse, the emails I get from them just say, “Oh you have a bill.” I usually ignore those emails since I just assume my autopay will take care of it.
Well, it turns out I missed 2 payments on it and now I’ve gone delinquent on the account and it’s been reported to the credit bureaus. I immediately logged on and made a payment. I’m pretty upset they wouldn’t have emailed me earlier saying, “Hey your account is past due.” Or maybe they did and it went to junk email or I deleted it. Regardless, I’m not too happy about the situation. I’ll call up NM when I get back home to see what they can do, but I’m not expecting much.
Turning off paperless statements
I think this was the final nail in the coffin. While I use Mint.com to check on my charges, I’ve been lazy to reconcile my Amex offers, and let’s face it, how many of us actually log in and read every credit card statement? Exactly. I want to be able to easily reconcile my credit card statements going forward. I’ll still keep autopay; I just want the paper statement.
This will mostly help with rarely used credit cards too since now I’ll get an actual paper reminder in the mail vs an email going to the junk inbox. It’ll be a pain turning off paperless statements, but in the long run, it’ll be beneficial so I don’t miss these types of mistakes again.
I have a spreadsheet of every card and I log into every account to make sure there is nothing due/outstanding at the end of the month. Takes 20 mins a month – well worth it.
How many cards do you have though Mark? And are you logging into obscure cards that you may not have used in years?
Around 40 cards between the wife and I….yeah I go through the oldies that are never used because they sometimes get auto billed for crap I forget about like angieslist subscription etc.
Impressive. I like your idea. Maybe I’ll get off my ass and do it too.
I like to use paper statements as well. It’s a lot easier for me to keep track of everything.
Glad to hear paper is working for someone
How do you know you won’t start tossing the credit card statements into the recycle bin along with the rest of the junk mail thinking “oh I have autopay so I don’t need to open this…”
I actually like opening mail. Plus I’ll still have electronic statements so this will be a double reminder.