This is a guest post from Mr. CC from Ask Mr. Creditcard. Mr. Credit Card answers reader’s questions about credit, debt and credit cards each day on Ask Mr. Credit Card’s Blog. You are invited to grab his free RSS feed for more tips on credit management. I encourage you to check it out!

Controlling your Credit Spending, One Month at a Time

Whether you are paying your credit cards off in full every month, or you are paying a balance, let me share with you some tips to help you to manage your cash flow and control your spending.

1. Consolidate – Most people carry many credit cards. If your limit on one card is high enough for your day to day needs, then try to consolidate your spending in to just one Visa or Mastercard. If your primary card is an American Express, then use your Visa or Mastercard merely as a backup.

This has all sorts of advantages. For one, you will have fewer bills to pay. You will also have an easier time keeping track of your spending, both in your head, and online. It is a lot easier to register and log in to one credit card account in order to frequently check how much you are spending.

Finally, if you are a reward card holder, having your rewards in one system makes them much more valuable.

I agree it’s easier to pay off one credit card than many. I have one maine mastercard and one american express for costco.

2. Stay On Top Of It – After you have consolidated all or most of your spending to a single card, then you can then check your balance frequently and easily. Checking in often gives you a good idea of what you are spending money on, and gives you an alert to control your spending before it
is too late.

I track every penny of our spending so I can tell you the balance pretty much daily because it keeps to my “budget”.

3. Know Your Statement Closing Date – On my primary card, I know that my statement closes on the 15th of the month. If I buy a new big screen television on December 15th, I know that I will have to pay for it on or about January 6th. If I make the same purchase on the 16th, my bill will
be due on about February 6th. Note, this really only matters to people who pay off their balance in full every month. For those who are carrying a balance, they will always be paying interest on every day the balance is owed.

The important thing to remember is not to abuse this knowledge. If you will not be able to pay for something in 45 days, there is little difference in charging it before your statement closes or after. In fact, sometimes I will knowingly charge large items before my closing date, just so I feel
like I will not have an overly large bill looming a month and a half later. I also might make large purchases before my closing date if I am in a hurry to earn enough points or miles on my reward card for a specific reward.

You can ASK a credit card company to close a statement when you want it to. Mine all close at the end of the month around the 27th or 28th, as do my other bills so I can pay all my bills on 1st of every month! They are more than happy to comply.

4. Go On A Diet – Once you know your closing date, controlling your spending is often as easy as delaying it. If I know that I am close to spending as much as I can afford for the month, I will delay any discretionary spending until my statement closes. I think of it as a spending diet. I leave my card in my wallet, and cut back on luxuries for a little while, until my income has a chance to catch up to bills. Like a real diet, having a goal is the key. In a spending diet, the goal is to make it to the next statement closing date.

I used to do this as well when we lived more paycheck to paycheck a few years ago. Now it’s a little easier because we have breathing room, but it’s a good way to keep on budgetary track.

5. How To Never Pay Your Bill Late – This is simple, always pay electronically through your online bank account. This was an amazing new feature in 1995 when I started banking with one of the first internet banks in the world. Today, writing checks and licking stamps has gone the way of
the pony express and the telegraph. There is so much that can go wrong with relying on the vagaries of the Postal Service to avoid late fees and interest charges while maintaining your credit rating. Even when your check arrives on time, poorly run and unscrupulous banks have been caught holding the check for a few days, and then claiming they have received it late!

6. Never Pay Your Bill Early – The only way to reliably pay your bill by mail on time is to send it about ten days early. Most of the time, it will arrive much earlier. In that situation, you must ensure that you have funds in your bank account to cover it. Even when it all works out, you are still loaning the bank an amount equal to your payment for a few days, with no interest. One of the great features of most online bill pay systems is that the money is taken out of your account the day the payment
is made. If you have an interest checking account, then you will be accruing interest on your money until the last minute.

Personally I pay all bills early. Mostly due to the fact I pay bills once a month. Then don’t worry about it. Habit from being paid once a month.

7. Double Check Everything – If paying a credit card on time seems designed to be difficult, that is because it is. Banks love charging late fees and interest rates that go back months, just for receiving your payment a day late. How else can you explain their practice of making your due date on
weekends and National Holidays? When you pay online with your bank, be very careful to ensure payment is received on a workday before the due date. Also, before confirming the transaction, double check the that you are paying the right amount on the right account. Before I started doing
this, I made the wrong payments occasionally. It turns out that that is probably the the most common way that the electronic bill pay system can screw things up.

This automatically happens if you use your credit card to reconcile your budget with your spending.

Once you have a system down, like the one I described, the process gets easier every month. I only spend a few minutes going over my credit card statement, and paying the bill online. In this way, I stay ahead of the game, avoiding interest and fees, while saving my time for more enjoyable pursuits.

Thank you and great post Mr. CC. Hope you enjoyed it and check out his site AskMrCreditCard.