A little tip that I figured out to help pay off credit card balances faster

Tweet

Like many people, I have got balances of several of my credit cards. I won't go into how I got myself into this mess, unfortunately things happen. I will share a way to make payments on your credit cards faster. (Keep in mind that I am not able to get a loan to pay down my balances or another credit card with 0% interest to transfer balances to.) I get two checks a month: one on the middle of the month and one on the last day of the month. I managed to change my due dates for my credit cards to the second half of the month and use my paycheck from the middle of the month to pay them. All of my utilities are due on the first part of the month, so I have used the check from the last day of the month to pay the utility bills are due on the first part of the next month. I made a spreadsheet for my credit card accounts that shows credit limit, balance due, minimum due, interest paid for each card. I have a spreadsheet to budget my monthly expenses as well. As I make a payment on an account, I subtract the amount the interest that I paid on that card from the payment I made then subtract that amount from my balance due. The spreadsheet also shows the percentage rate for each credit card account. This spreadsheet helped me to realize that I was paying almost $100 a month on INTEREST on my credit cards. The total balance of all my cards was over $5,000 and I have high Annual Percentage Rates! I finally paid one of the credit cards off with the highest interest rate, (let's call it BIG BUCKS BANK or BBB). Now, anything that I charge to my BBB card won't be charged interest if I pay the full balance due by the due date. On this card, the billing cycle ends on the third of each month. Now, instead of paying the utilities due in December with my paycheck that I got on November 30th, I paid the utilities with the BBB card that has a zero balance. (All of my utilities are due after the third of the month. My December utility bills are appear on my I BBB card's January bill that won't be due until January 27th.) I use the money that I budgeted for my utility bills to pay as many pf my credit card minimums off two weeks earlier that I have before. I paid the balance on the BBB card now (even though it isn't due until January 27th) with my second monthly check, in this case, December 14th . By doing this, I can have a zero balance in the BBB account and use it to pay the utility bills that will be due in the beginning of January. Basically, I am taking advantage of the zero balance of the BBB card at the beginning of each month, to pay the utility bills. This way, I can keep paying the credit card bills two weeks earlier to save money on the interest charges for each account. I am also trying to just make minimum payments ahead of time, instead of paying more than the minimum on any account. For example, one account has a minimum due of $25. Since I am paying the minimums only, (I made two separate payments, one with each paycheck.) I have already paid the December and January payments on that account. (I have already finished my Christmas shopping.) By paying ahead on the minimums, I can be prepared in case of an unexpected expense/emergency (A sale on a delicious cheesecake ISN'T an emergency.) Once I am ahead on all of my minimum payments, then I will focus and paying extra money in addition to the minimums. I am going to be tough and reduce my spending as much as possible. I am planning meals ahead of time and my budget for groceries and using sales whenever possible. Now that all of my minimums are paid ahead of time, my goal is to pay the minimum plus monthly interest. When I have extra money, I will pay more on the balances. I want to be debt free on my credit cards and then try to make extra monthly minimums on my car payment and be a month ahead on that before adding money to the principle. Not only will I save money on interest, I'm also getting a lower balance to credit limit ratio, so my credit score will improve.