Track Your Initial Spending on Your New Credit Card
Credit Card Reference, Step-by-Step Guide: After You Receive Your New Card
After you get a new credit card, you usually want to use it for JUST ENOUGH purchases to earn the signup bonus and no more. Spending more than the initial spending requirement is not the end of the world. However, once you’ve hit the required amount of spending, you are better off switching your spending to another new card or to a card that earns more valuable rewards for your purchases.
To know when to stop using your new card, you need to track how much you’ve spent on it. There are several options—pick the one that works for you.
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Option 1: Keep track of your new card’s monthly bills
You can simply keep a total of the "balance due" amounts of each of the credit card bills you receive. Once the total is over the minimum amount that you are required to spend (making sure to not include the annual fee), you can stop using the card.
This option requires the least amount of work, but you’ll wind up spending too much on the card in the final month, as you won’t know exactly when to stop using it.
Option 2: Track the balance on the credit card company’s website
If you want to stop spending sooner, you can monitor your progress by periodically logging into your account on the credit card company’s website.
Let’s say that after a month or two, you’ve spent $2,350 of the $3,000 you need to spend on the card. You need to spend $650 more to meet the initial spending requirement. During the next month, you can periodically sign into the credit card's website to see how you are doing. When you see the outstanding balance go over the remaining amount you need to spend, you can immediately stop using the card.
Chase has a spending tracker built into its website and phone app and Wells Fargo has one built into its website (under Go Far Rewards). To find the Chase tracker you need to navigate to the Ultimate Rewards site and view your "Rewards Activity".
Barclay's "Spend analyzer" lets you easily see your usage over the past three months. These are the most straightforward ways to track your progress for those cards. You'll still need to check manually, but you won't need to tally numbers across months or remember to subtract out the annual fee.
For some Amex cards, there might also be a tracker on the website that shows exactly how close you are to earning your bonus, but this isn't available very consistently.
Option 3: View your total spending using Mint
Online personal finance tools are a great way to track your credit card balances, particularly if you need to track more than one card at a time. They provide a single consolidated view of all your credit card accounts. Rather than needing to separately sign into each credit card company website, you can sign into the personal finance tool and see everything in one place.
To use any of these tools, you’ll need to provide the usernames and passwords that you use to sign into the credit card companies' websites. The finance tools use this information to log into your credit card account on your behalf and retrieve your information. Once you’ve set it up with your account information, any new credit card that you get from that bank will automatically show up in the tool. For example, once you've added your American Express sign-in information, any new American Express card will be automatically added.
The best option is probably Mint, a service from the same company who makes Quicken. It's available as both an app and as a website. iTunes link. Google Play link.
The online version of the Mint tool provides a convenient way to view your total spending since you've received a card.
To see how much you've spent on your new card, click on the "Trends" section (on the navigation bar across the top of the screen). You should be viewing "Spending: Over Time". If not, select that option from the choices on the left side of the screen. Then, choose your credit card from the account list that is located above the chart. You'll need to uncheck the "All Accounts" option at the top of the list and then select the specific account you want to view.
The chart shows the spending for each month. But the monthly amounts are conveniently totaled below the chart.
By default, Mint should show your spending over the last three months, convenient for checking the initial spending time period on most cards. If the card has a longer time period for completing the initial spending requirement and it has been more than three months since you've received it, you can select a custom time period using the "During" control above the chart.
Within the app (as opposed to the website), you'll conveniently have access to all your credit cards in one place, but there is no way to get a quick view of spending over several months.
To get to your account information, click on the Overview button and then on the account summary.
Clicking on the desired account will show you a list of all your recent transactions.
To see how much you’ve spent on the card so far, you’ll need to swipe through the list to find the green payment transactions for any prior months and add these to the current balance.
Option 4: Set up an alert
All the methods described above require you to manually check your progress. As a result, there is a good chance you won't immediately notice when you've reached the required amount of spending and will at least slightly overspend on the new card.
If you want to avoid this, you can set up an alert that tracks the balance on your card. Each of the credit card companies will let you set up alerts. When the balance on the card reaches an amount that you specify, they will send you an email or a text message. With some services, you'll need to settle for a daily balance update instead.
Rather than checking the website over-and-over to see how you are doing, you can set up the alert and get notified as soon as you have spent enough.
For example, if you think you might hit the spending requirement in the first month, you can set up an alert right away for the full amount of the initial spending requirement (making sure to account for any annual fee). Then, when the credit card bill is paid each month, you can adjust the alert downwards so that is equal to the remaining amount of required spending. As soon as you’ve charged enough, you’ll get an alert from the credit company and will know that it is time to stop using the card.
