Carrying a credit card is a huge convenience, every American knows this. Testament to this is the large number of American consumers who carry one or more credit cards even amidst the credit card crisis. The convenience of carrying a credit card is offsetted by the financial risks that they carry, however.
The convenience of using credit cards for purchases do not come free. Credit cards often come with fees and interest charges. Some of these are operational charges such as annual fees which credit card holders just cannot avoid. Others are, however, avoidable such as late fees. Late fees are one of the most financially damaging fees a credit card holder can receive from his or her credit card. Fortunately, a credit card holder can easily avoid late fees.
From their name, late fees are charged to the card holder, whenever he or she is late in paying off his or her monthly balance. Usually, a late fee is taken as a percentage from the balance that a card holder has. One of the worst things that credit card holders can do with their credit cards is to miss paying off their credit card balance at the end of the month. Whenever they do this, they incur large late fees, which add up to their balance for every month that they fail to pay their balance completely.
An even worse strategy is to pay only the minimum monthly balance. Doing this, a credit card holder pays only a minimal amount to their balance. The larger part of their payment goes to their fees.
To avoid late fees, credit card holders need to control their spending habits. Often times, credit card holders find themselves unable to pay off their monthly balance simply because their spending exceeded their ability to pay. Another common trap that credit card holders fall into, causing them to pay late fees, is not paying enough attention on their deadlines. It is often a good idea to pay credit card bills several days before their actual deadline. Things like lost mail can mean a delay in payments if credit card holders pay right on the deadline which results in late fees for them.
It may happen that a credit card bill deadline arrives at the time of the month when the credit card holder has the least amount of cash to pay it off. For instance, if the due date of the bill is on the tenth day of the month and the credit card holder's pay date is on the fifteenth of the month. In a situation like this, the credit card holder has the option of calling up their credit card company to ask for a rearrangement of their due dates. Nowadays, credit card companies are more focused on having their customers pay their bills on time, and they are more open to requests like this.