Credit Cards: Important Dates

​Billing Cycle Definition

In the context of charge cards and credit cards, the following 4 bullets all define a date range containing the first posted transaction through the last posted transaction made on a charge or credit card for a given period:

• Statement Cycle
• Statement Period
• Billing Period
• Billing Cycle

The following all refer to the first day for which charges will appear on a given statement:

• Billing Cycle Opening Date
• Billing Cycle Begin Date
• Statement Period Opening Date
• Statement Period Begin Date

The following all refer to the last day for which charges will appear on a given statement:

• Billing Cycle Closing Date
• Billing Cycle End Date
• Statement Period Closing Date
• Statement Period End Date

We could make additional bullets with slightly different wording and combinations, but that would quickly become tedious.

​Payment Due Date

Your credit card bill will have a minimum due by a specific date.
That specific date may also have a time of day and time zone.
Whatever payment due date is assigned to a given credit card on its first statement will likely continue to be the same day of each following month.
However, there may or may not be some shifting as to which dates the statement opening and statement closing dates fall on.

​Minimum Payment

Each statement will list a payment due date, statement balance, and minimum payment d amount.
Paying the minimum due on or by your due date will mean that you are in compliance with the Terms and Conditions of your account.
In italics below I will list some text regarding minimum due from the American Express website.

"Different card issuers calculate minimum payments slightly differently, but it’s generally between 1-to-3% of your statement balance or a standard minimum, whichever is more. For example, one of my cards charges 1% of the statement balance but not less than $35 unless the full balance is less than that, in which case the minimum payment would be the full balance. If I carry a balance from one month to the next, the minimum payment is calculated slightly differently: it’s 1% of my balance plus any interest that was charged in the previous month."

Paying just the minimum amount due does not necessarily mean that you will not be accruing interest.
If you have consistently been paying your statement balance between when your statement is created and that statement's due date, then you will not acrrue interest, provided that none of your charges are coded as:

• Balance Transfers
  or
• Cash Advances

​Credit Bureau Reporting Dates

In the United States there are the following three credit bureaus for personal credit:

• Equifax
• Experian
• TransUnion

Not every transaction related to your credit card is reported to credit bureaus.
The following are examples of things that would be reported:

• As a new account is moving through the process of being either approved or denied, there will likely be a hard pull from any one, any two, or all three of the above credit bureaus.
  It best to think of a hard pull as a "cost" of applying for credit, not a "cost" of being approved for credit.
  In some cases you may be granted credit with just a soft pull.
  If you have a card issued by American Express and you apply for another card issued by American Express there might be only a soft pull.
• If your account is approved then the account opening will be reported to the credit bureaus.
  People often confuse the concepts of a hard pull and a new account reporting.
  If I were several years younger, I would still be so vain as to believe this one webpage would resolve that confusion.
  Credit issuers vary greater in how quickly new accounts are reported to credit bureaus.
  Historically, American Express issued cards began reporting to credit bureaus with the card's second statement.
  As with anything else, that is subject to change.