3 credit card charges you should watch carefully

Don’t let some of these credit card charges sneak up on you.

13:30 16 April 2013

It’s a pretty universal fact of life that credit cards come with credit card charges. Even the prepaid cards that you purchase with your own money have fees attached to them.

 

Many times, it’s not our own purchases that get us into some trouble when we’re out shopping. Most of us are responsible shoppers and we know our credit limit.
Occasionally though, we don’t realize that our credit card company charges us if finance charges put us over our limit. That’s just one example. Here is a list of some of the credit card charges you may run into, so that you can plan accordingly.

 

• Late fees—luckily, most credit card companies offer easy solutions to avoiding late fees. Use the credit card company’s website to sign up for automatic payments. You’ll always be on time, and you’ll never have to worry about potential interest rate increases because the payment slipped your mind.

 

• Overdraft fees—these are much trickier than late fees. There’s no simple way to avoid this, except by checking your account frequently and estimating your finance charges. It’s best to just avoid the issue by leaving enough of your credit limit to handle the finance charges.

 

• Annual fees—there are typically a couple different ways that companies handle annual fees. They may break them into smaller credit card charges and assess them on a monthly or quarterly basis. Keep track of this to make sure you leave enough for these in addition to the finance charges.

The other way companies may handle this is by charging the annual fee in one lump sum. The only way to avoid this is to only apply for cards without annual fees. Make sure you read the small print since this doesn’t usually appear as part of the introductory offer section.

 

These credit card charges don’t include finance charges since there is no way to avoid them besides paying your bill off entirely.