How To Change Your Credit Card Statement Closing Date To Manage And Track Your Spending

When you open up a credit card account, you are randomly assigned a fixed credit card payment due date to pay the balance on your credit card. Based on the credit card payment due date, and your grace period, the statement closing date for card activity is determined.

Table of Contents

• Your payment due date determines your credit card statement closing date
• How your credit card statement closing date is calculated
• A mid-month credit card statement closing date makes it difficult to track your credit card spending by calendar month
• How to change your payment due date to get the best statement closing date
• Easily compare your credit card statement closing balance to your bank balances and budget at month-end

Your Credit Card Payment Due Date Determines Your Statement Closing Date

While your credit card payment date will always be the 10th of each month, your credit card statement closing date will vary each month, based on whether the previous month has 28 to 31 days.

How Your Credit Card Statement Closing Date is Calculated

If your credit card payment due date is June 10th, and you have a 25-day grace period, your credit card statement closing date will be cut off 25 days before June 10th.

Since your credit card payment due date will always be the 10th of each month, the bank will count backward 25 days from the 10th to determine the statement closing date.

So, for the June 10th payment due date, your credit card statement closing date will be May 16th.

• You will have 10 days of grace in June, from the 1st to the 10th
• and 15 days in May, from the 17th to the 31st.
• See the Chart below

• When to pay with a credit card or debit card

A Mid-Month Statement Closing Date Makes it Difficult To Track Your Credit Card Spending By Calendar Month

As you can see below, the problem with having a credit card payment due date on the 10th of each month is that your activity will be spread over two calendar months.

Based on the example above, the credit card statement generated for payment on June 10th will cover the credit card activity from April 18th to May 16th.

Without downloading the activity into financial software or a spreadsheet, it is really difficult for you to figure out how much activity was in April and how much was in May.

Also, it isn’t easy to figure out how the activity was against a budget or where the money is coming from to pay the balance due on June 10th.

This is why so many people have trouble managing their credit card debt.

Change Your Payment Due Date To Get The Best Statement Closing Date

How do you get around all of this confusion?

Call your credit card company and ask them the number of days in your grace period. If the grace period is 25 days, tell them you want the credit card payment due date to be the 26th.

As shown above, by having a credit card payment due date of the 26th, your credit card statement closing date for your activity will be the 1st of each month (the 26th of the month less 25 days equals the 1st of the month).

If they don’t let you pick the 26th, go to the 27th or 28th, that way you will only be a few days into the same month.

Easily Compare Your Credit Card Statement Closing Balance To Your Bank Balances and Budget At Month-End

Now, when you get your monthly credit card statement, it will cut off on the 1st of the month. Over 95% of the activity will be from the same month! Only one day of activity will be in the next month!

With the credit card statement closing balance of $2,500, you will be able to quickly know if you can cover the balance by just looking at the balance of your bank accounts.

Plus, you can easily compare your monthly budget against the credit card statement balance too.

As part of my monthly closing process, you will actually determine how much comes from each bank account to cover the $2,500 balance due.