{"id":9,"date":"2022-03-21T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-21T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moneywithkatie.com\/3-stupid-credit-card-mistakes-ive-made-that-you-can-avoid\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T16:27:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T16:27:07","slug":"3-stupid-credit-card-mistakes-ive-made-that-you-can-avoid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moneywithkatie.com\/3-stupid-credit-card-mistakes-ive-made-that-you-can-avoid\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Stupid Credit Card Mistakes I Made That You Can Avoid"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

I\u2019d like to start this blog post by stating the obvious: Nobody\u2019s perfect.<\/p>\n

I pride myself on being excellent with credit cards: I regularly use my points to take free vacations, I\u2019ve never carried a balance, and I\u2019d consider myself relatively savvy (all right, much<\/em> savvier than your average credit card user).<\/p>\n

Today, I\u2019m going to highlight three annoying mistakes I made recently that I want you<\/em> to avoid.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Mistake #1: I forgot to set up autopay.<\/h2>\n

I\u2019m the queen of autopay. I love automating stuff that I\u2019d otherwise forget. I\u2019d automate my bathroom schedule if I could\u2014ain\u2019t nobody got time to remember to pee.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

(That\u2019s a partial lie; I didn\u2019t really think about it at all. It had been so long since I\u2019d set up a new account that I didn\u2019t even think about it. That\u2019s how out of sight, out of mind my credit cards are, being used for purchases and paid off automatically.)<\/p>\n

You can imagine my surprise when\u2014about a month later\u2014I see a $29 late fee from American Express appear in my Copilot transactions (God bless Copilot; I caught it immediately).<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the f*** is this?\u201d I said out loud, probably off mute in the middle of a meeting.<\/p>\n

Frantically, I logged into my AmEx account, certain that mistakes had been made (and not by me). Surely I <\/em>hadn\u2019t been late on a payment. How was that even possible?<\/em><\/p>\n

And there it was, staring back at me:<\/p>\n

LATE FEE: $29<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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

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<\/a> make this super<\/em> easy, because you don\u2019t need to determine every single time how that cash will be allocated\u2014the algorithm just does its thing and follows the goal details that you provide for it.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I digress:<\/p>\n

Always remember when you get a new card to turn on autopay and set it to the \u201cStatement Balance\u201d setting<\/strong>. This will ensure the entire statement gets paid. Which leads me to my next point\u2026<\/p>\n

Mistake #2: My one-day-late payment triggered an interest charge on the balance.<\/h2>\n

To add insult to injury, a few days later, another<\/em> charge appeared in Copilot.<\/p>\n

INTEREST: $22.20<\/p>\n

\u201cOK, actually though, what the f*** is happening?\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Sure enough, I had been charged interest on my first month\u2019s balance because it was one day late<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That wasn\u2019t going to fly with me, though. I was pissed enough about the late fee \u2013 interest, too? Give me a break.<\/p>\n

I chatted up a representative and asked them to confirm why I was being charged interest.<\/p>\n

Sure enough, because I was a day late, the entire balance got hit with a 20% interest rate.<\/p>\n

\u201cListen,\u201d I explained, \u201cI\u2019ve been a loyal AmEx cardholder since 2019, and I\u2019d 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

It took some finagling, but the rep. eventually agreed to reimburse me the $22.20.<\/p>\n

The lesson? Late fees never just mean late fees. They also mean interest, even if it was an honest mistake.<\/p>\n

The good news? Sometimes, if you nip it in the bud immediately and ask nicely, they\u2019ll give you a break.<\/p>\n

Mistake #3: I didn\u2019t read the terms and conditions about what counted toward the spending threshold for the welcome bonus.<\/h2>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Friends, neither of which are true.<\/p>\n

With most vendors, it\u2019s only merchant purchases<\/em> that count toward the spending threshold.<\/p>\n

I called AmEx to ask how close I was to hitting my \u201c$4,000 in three months\u201d spend threshold and\u2014with 20 days left in my three-month timespan\u2014was told that I\u2019ve spent (ready for this?) a whopping $600.<\/p>\n

None of my Venmo rent payments made via AmEx Send & Split counted toward my spend threshold.<\/p>\n

\u201cShit,\u201d I thought, \u201cHow am I going to charge $3,000 worth of merchandise to my card before Nov. 20?\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s. Since we\u2019d split the bill evenly via Venmo later, it didn\u2019t cause me to overspend\u2014just to put a $4,500 hotel bill on my card for later reimbursement.<\/p>\n

(But trust me, it was definitely annoying.)<\/p>\n

Summary<\/h2>\n

You can be great with credit cards and still mess it up. You might be wondering: Damn, seems like a lot of shit slipped through the cracks. What gives?<\/em><\/p>\n

Honestly? I\u2019ve been distracted. I haven\u2019t been as diligent as I should be. This is proof that automating things in your financial life (autopay, investments, the works) will mean that you\u2019re not (a) getting hit with unnecessary, avoidable fees and (b) forgetting to invest money that you should be.<\/p>\n

As you fire up your credit card travel rewards game, don\u2019t make these silly slip-ups \u2013 if you need to create a spreadsheet to track whether or not you\u2019ve turned on autopay, which credits each card offers, and when you\u2019ll hit the bonuses, do it! It\u2019ll help keep you on track.<\/p>\n

I got too laissez-faire with mine, and it ended up sucking a lot of the fun out of my newest card acquisition.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019d like to start this blog post by stating the obvious: Nobody\u2019s perfect. I pride myself on being excellent with credit cards: I regularly use my points to take free vacations, I\u2019ve never carried a balance, and I\u2019d consider myself relatively savvy (all right, much savvier than your average credit card user). Today, I\u2019m going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178814,"featured_media":2395,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"si-template-single-post-debt.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[48,45],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spending-and-saving","tag-debt","tag-everyday-spending-and-budgeting"],"yoast_head":"\n3 Stupid Credit Card Mistakes I Made That You Can Avoid - Money with Katie<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/moneywithkatie.com\/3-stupid-credit-card-mistakes-ive-made-that-you-can-avoid\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"3 Stupid Credit Card Mistakes I Made That You Can Avoid - Money with Katie\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I\u2019d like to start this blog post by stating the obvious: Nobody\u2019s perfect. 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