Saturday, December 1, 2007

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Back in August, I messed up and paid one of my credit cards late. After a few phone calls and back and forth, the late fee was removed (twice, then one put back) and I was promised that my interest rate wouldn't change. Which it didn't- the interest stands at 12.49%, making it my lowest rate of all our credit cards. In fact, while writing this post, I realized that the interest rate has dropped from 12.99% to 12.49%, without me having to ask.

What has changed on this account is our minimum payments. I pay attention to the minimum payments because, as our smallest interest rate in the snowball, that's all I pay. Right after the late fee drama, the minimum payment was off by one late fee ($39), and totaled $171. Then the following month (October), the payment was still high, at $164. This was completely unexplained.

Logically, as more payments are made, the principle will decrease, and the interest earned will also decrease over time. As most credit cards charge interest on the average daily balance, days with longer months will have slightly higher interest charges than shorter months, thus creating a variable interest amount built into the minimum payment. So I checked out the interest charged in August (for September's payment) and September (for October's payment). They were $70.49 and $64.78, respectively. I think this is why the interest rate dropped from $171 to $164. Now we're getting somewhere.

Except... in August, the minimum payment was $133. So October's minimum payment should have been somewhere close to that. And then November's minimum payment was $128, and the new bill for December has a minimum payment of $122. Why does this have to be so confusing?!?

I think that, quite simply, BofA made a mistake in calculating October's minimum payment. Maybe it was a result of Sepetmber's mix-up, or maybe it was just a glitch. In the long run, it doesn't make that much of a difference, and the money was applied to the principle, so it's still going to the debt payoff. What really disturbs me is that the minimum payment can change so drastically. While my budget allows for such fluctuations, it could be detrimental to someone who is under tighter financial restrictions. What is really disturbing is that I couldn't find how my minimum payment is calculated on the statement, nor was I able to find it on their website. I hope it's there somewhere and I'm just missing it - otherwise it leaves me with a very uneasy feeling.

67 comments:

paidtwice said...

Hmm.

Well, I have a BofA card but I have never carried a balance on it so I have never looked at how they calculate the minimum payment.

My Capital One card it says on the website in the disclosure section that the minimum payment is 3% of the outstanding balance (or some other minimum number like $10 but my balance was never low enough for that to matter lol).

I recommend if you want to find out and can't find it anywhere, call the phone number on your card and ask them to send you a new copy of their disclosure statement. It should be in there somewhere.

HTH!

And btw, great job paying down that debt monster :)

HS @ Our Debt Blog said...

If it make you feel better our minimum payment on our CITI credit card, balance 11,788 rate 14.40 is $278!

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paidtwice - I know, I need to do a little more digging and then call them. It's just weird how much it fluctuated. Thanks, I can't wait to kick that monster out of my house!

Our debt - We had a nice big one like that and I was so happy to get rid of it. I think the smaller chunks of debt are easier to deal with mentally.

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