Understanding the Importance of Your Credit Card Statement

It’s important to go through your credit card statement carefully for various reasons. You can check the outstanding balance and the payment due date to pay your credit card bill accurately on time. You can track expenses and cut any unnecessary spendings. If you spot fraudulent transactions, you can report the lender to take suitable action right away. You can even learn about any changes in the card terms and conditions or features. Here are the things to check on your card statement and why. 

Credit Limit

The card issuer sets this limit which is the maximum amount you can spend on your credit card. The lender can revise the credit limit from time to time.

Statement Due Date

It’s the date on which the credit card statement is generated. Interest for late payment is generally charged from the first date of statement generation to the current date. 

Payment Due Date

By this date, you need to pay the outstanding amount to the card issuer to avoid late payment charges. 

Grace Period

It’s the period between the end of a billing cycle to the payment due date. Ensure to pay the dues before or during this period. Else interest begins to accrue on the outstanding amount and is reflected in the next credit card bill. Sometimes, it can be difficult to pay the bill before the grace period ends. In that case, if you have a credit card with a low interest rate, you need not pay hefty late payment charges. 

Minimum Amount Due

It’s the minimum amount of the outstanding balance that you must pay to avoid late fees. However, try to pay the full balance since the interest begins to accrue on it until you’ve paid it in full. 

Total Amount Due

It includes the amount spent in the month before, the outstanding from the previous bill and any applicable late payment or interest charges, overdrawn fees, service charges, etc.  

Billing Cycle

It’s the period between 2 consecutive credit card statement dates. Any transaction made during this period is reflected in the statement. 

Transaction Details

It’s the list of every online and in-store transaction made using your credit card, including the values, particulars and dates of the transactions. Go through the details to ensure there are no doubtful transactions. Also, you can analyse your spending habits to save better in the future. 

Reward Points

You can also check your reward points to redeem them. However, there’s no hurry to redeem them if you have the best rewards credit card that offers reward points without any expiry. Also, you need not bother about any redemption fee since such a card doesn’t charge you for redeeming rewards. 

Important Information

Here, you can usually get a summary of any modifications in the credit card features, terms of usage or the rates of any charges. 

Some credit cards omit certain charges like cash advance fee and annual maintenance fee so the total amount due is less. Consider these benefits before going for an online credit card application.