3 Stupid Credit Card Mistakes I’ve Made That You Can Avoid

I’d like to start this blog post by stating the obvious: Nobody’s perfect.

I pride myself on being excellent with credit cards: I regularly use my points to take free vacations, I’ve never carried a balance, and I’d consider myself relatively savvy (all right, much savvier than your average credit card user).

But even I make mistakes – and today, I’m going to highlight three annoying mistakes I made recently that I want you to avoid.

When I got my new American Express Gold card in August, it had been more than a year since I had last gotten a new one. My skills were a little rusty.

Mistake #1: I forgot to set up autopay.

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I’m the queen of autopay. I love automating stuff that I’d otherwise forget.

I’d automate my bathroom schedule if I could—ain’t nobody got time to remember to pee.

But I made a crucial mistake with my new Gold card: I forgot.

Because I had a Platinum card already (and the cards are shared in the same account), I (wrongly) assumed that autopay would apply to the new card.

(That’s a partial lie; I didn’t really think about it at all. It had been so long since I’d set up a new account that I didn’t even think about it. That’s how out of sight, out of mind my credit cards are, being used for purchases and paid off automatically.)

You can imagine my surprise when—about a month later—I see a $29 late fee from American Express appear in my Copilot transactions (God bless Copilot; I caught it immediately).

“What the f*** is this?” I said out loud, probably off mute in the middle of a meeting.

Frantically, I logged into my AmEx account, certain that mistakes had been made (and not by me). Surely I hadn’t been late on a payment. How was that even possible?

And there it was, staring back at me:

LATE FEE: $29

My heart sank as I noticed the due date for the first statement was the day before. I had missed it, because I had neglected to set up autopay.

It bears repeating: I automate as much as possible in my personal finances, including investing, because I know that needing to remember every month to pay bills and transfer money to my investment accounts leaves very important decisions to the fickle, forgetful nature of my overcommitted schedule.

Beyond setting up autopay for your credit cards, setting up automatic transfers to your investment accounts can take all the discipline and memory out of the equation: Firms like Betterment make this super easy, because you don’t need to determine every single time how that cash will be allocated—the algorithm just does its thing and follows the goal details that you provide for it.

Anyway, I digress:

Always remember when you get a new card to turn on autopay and set it to the “Statement Balance” setting. This will ensure the entire statement gets paid. Which leads me to my next point…

Mistake #2: My one-day-late payment triggered an interest charge on the balance.

To add insult to injury, a few days later, another charge appeared in Copilot.

INTEREST: $22.20

“OK, actually though, what the f*** is happening?” I practically punched a hole in my keyboard navigating to the AmEx site. I was 5 minutes away from swearing off AmEx forever because of $52 in fees.

Sure enough, I had been charged interest on my first month’s balance because it was one day late.

That wasn’t going to fly with me, though. I was pissed enough about the late fee – interest, too? Give me a break.

I chatted up a representative and asked them to confirm why I was being charged interest.

Sure enough, because I was a day late, the entire balance got hit with a 20% interest rate.

“Listen,” I explained, “I’ve been a loyal AmEx cardholder with a Platinum card since 2018, and I’d really appreciate a gesture of goodwill for this mistake. I assumed autopay would be turned on automatically because I set my payment that way in this account before. Please waive the interest charge.”

It took some finagling, but the rep. eventually agreed to reimburse me the $22.20.

The lesson? Late fees never just mean late fees. They also mean interest, even if it was an honest mistake.

The good news? Sometimes, if you nip it in the bud immediately and ask nicely, they’ll give you a break.

Mistake #3: I didn’t read the terms and conditions about what counted toward the spending threshold for the welcome bonus.

When I saw AmEx introduced a new Send & Split feature that allowed a customer to use their AmEx card on Venmo for free, I (stupidly) assumed that it would (a) count toward my spend threshold and (b) earn points.

Friends, neither of which are true.

With most vendors, it’s only merchant purchases that count toward the spending threshold.

I called AmEx to ask how close I was to hitting my “$4,000 in three months” spend threshold and—with 20 days left in my three-month timespan—was told that I’ve spent (ready for this?) a whopping $600.

None of my Venmo rent payments made via AmEx Send & Split counted toward my spend threshold.

“Shit,” I thought, “How am I going to charge $3,000 worth of merchandise to my card before Nov. 20?”

We were going on a big family vacation for Thanksgiving with four other adults, so I frantically asked my sister-in-law if I could put the entire hotel charge on my card instead of my brother-in-law’s. Since we’d split the bill evenly via Venmo later, it didn’t cause me to overspend—just to put a $4,500 hotel bill on my card for later reimbursement.

(But trust me, it was definitely annoying.)

Summary

You can be great with credit cards and still mess it up. You might be wondering: Damn, sis, it seems like a lot of shit slipped through the cracks. What gives?

Honestly? I’ve been distracted. I’m pretty spread thin right now, and it means little things slip through the cracks. I’m not as diligent as I should be. This is proof that automating things in your financial life (autopay, investments, the works) will mean that you’re not (a) getting hit with unnecessary, avoidable fees and (b) forgetting to invest money that you should be.

As you fire up your credit card travel rewards game, don’t make these silly slip-ups – if you need to create a spreadsheet to track whether or not you’ve turned on autopay, which credits each card offers, and when you’ll hit the bonuses, do it! It’ll help keep you on track.

I got too laissez-faire with mine, and it ended up sucking a lot of the fun out of my newest card acquisition.