Difference between revisions of "Track spending on your new credit card"
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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 hit the initial spending amount. 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. | 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 hit the initial spending amount. 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. | ||
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| + | For some Amex cards, there might be a tracker on the website that shows exactly how close you are to earning your bonus. You may also receive an email with an embedded tracker that updates whenever you open the message. You'll still have to check manually, but you won't need to tally numbers across months or remember to account for the annual fee. | ||
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=== Option 3: View your total spending with card using Mint === | === Option 3: View your total spending with card using Mint === | ||
Revision as of 21:00, 20 December 2018
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 generally better off switching to another new card, or to the cards that earn the most valuable reward rates 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 credit card bills
You can simply keep a total of the balance due amounts 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 it is time to stop using the card, until you actually receive your bill.
Option 2: Track the balance on the credit card company’s website
If you want to cut off your spending sooner, you can monitor your spending, by 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 hit the initial spending amount. 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.
For some Amex cards, there might be a tracker on the website that shows exactly how close you are to earning your bonus. You may also receive an email with an embedded tracker that updates whenever you open the message. You'll still have to check manually, but you won't need to tally numbers across months or remember to account for the annual fee.
Option 3: View your total spending with card 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 pull information from each of your credit card accounts into a single consolidated view. Rather than having to separately sign into each credit card company website to monitor what is going on with your associated cards, you can sign into the personal finance tool, and see everything in one place.
Even better, the online version of the Mint tool provides a convenient way to view the total spending since you've received the card.
The best option is 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.
To use any of these tools, you’ll need to provide the user name and password, that you use to sign into the credit card company’s websites. The 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 the account information for a credit card company, 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 Amex credit card will automatically show up, the next time you look at the personal finance tool.
To see how much you've spend on your new card, using the website, 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 un-check the "All Accounts" option at the top, and then select the specific account you want to view, further down the list.
The chart shows the spending for each month. But, the monthly amounts are conveniently totaled below the chart.
By default, it 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 the card, you can select a custom time period using the "During" control above the chart.
Within the app, 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 periodically 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 automatic alerts. When the balance on the card reaches an amount that you specify, they will send you an email or a text message. 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.
