The advice I gave her is when the bill arrives, write the check and put it into the mail IMMEDIATELY! Dad’s comment above is SPOT ON… snail mail sucks and delays are the norm not the exception.

So far that system is working extremely well for her and she hasn’t had a late payment yet.

If you pay the CC by check, several important points. Leave enough time. This gets many in trouble. The Post Office may tell you it takes 3 days to get from California to the east coast. Don’t believe them. It may happen. It may happen often. But it doesn’t happen all the time and one failure means late fees and interest. As soon as you can learn the payment address and check how far it is from you. I would leave 10 days for coast to coast. Less time if it is closer.

Next, use their envelope and include the payment return slip they provide. Do not put anything else in the envelope except the check. The automated mail sorting systems used at such places handle that situation very fast. Anything else may get put in a pile for manual processing and they are allowed by law to credit your payment a day or two later than it arrived if you don’t follow the rules I stated above. It is a tricky point and many people do not know about this.

Allow for banking holidays. They may or may not process on a banking holiday. There are more bank holidays than other people get. If you pass a bank office regularly, you can watch for the notice on the door about upcoming holidays. Bank holidays are regulated by the Fed. New Years Day, President’s day, MLK day, Memorial day, July 4, Labor day, Columbus day, Veterens day, Thanksgiving day, and Christmas are the holidays I believe.

Use a reminder calendar to schedule your payment sending day to avoid forgetting. When you get the bill, you can make the reminder. Watch for changing due dates. Sometimes it is the same time each month but it can move around a bit. Check every bill.

How excellent to know a computer-savvy young person is running into the same sorts of snafus I encountered. I thought it was just because my brain had petrified during the Cretaceous.

After considerable thrashing around, I ended up deciding it was far less hassle to let them send me a paper statement. Trick is, you need to open the mail immediately and calculate the turn-around time accurately, especially around holidays such as the 4th of July.

AMEX, for example, is due July 10. But what with the 4th and no mail service on Sundays, there are three “dead” USPS days between now and the due date.

No question if you want to pay online you should do so through your bank and not through the credit card’s “service.”

2. It’s much easier to pay a credit card bill, and all other bills, from your bank’s online billing service than through each service’s individual site. You just log-in, enter the amount you want to pay and the date, and it goes when you want it to. You can also pay all your other bills at the same time.

Since you’ll have a fixed amount on your card, it might make sense to set up a recurring payment. (I know there are people who will disagree with that, but in 10 years and over a dozen cards, I’ve never had a problem with payments)