I have only 1 credit card left to pay off which I had believed was at 18.99% APR. I made a payment of $36.46, which I thought would get me from $1,698.82 to $1,689.24. Well I signed onto my account, and low and behold the balance was $1,662.36! This was WAY below what I thought it would be.

So I did some math (using the tools here on savingadvice.com) and I discovered that my current APR for this credit is 0%!! OMG! I had NO idea that I had a 0% APR! The last time I checked it was over a year ago (basic training and now deployed). I have no access to the statements (they don't put them online) and it doesn't tell you what the APR is on the website, only the current amount due, past due, minimum payment and the ability to make a payment. It's a very basic site.

My plan will still have me paying off the card by March 2013 but that was with an 18.99% APR projection. Now that I know it is a 0% APR I'll won't have to pay any interest fees! YAY ME!!

Ok, so today's valuable lesson in paying off a credit card is pay BEFORE the due date!!

My card had a $653.30 @ 17.99% which was due on the 22 Nov 2012. What I did was just tell the automatic payment to pay in full instead of the minimum which it did do.

The only thing is that I got charged interest fees because of the interest accrued on that amount. It was only $8.72 but still, if I had known that I would be charged interest when they gave me a balance of $653.30 then I would have accounted for that when I paid the bill!

So yeah, I just went on ahead and paid it. It only takes one time for me to learn a mistake like that.

So this means that when I pay off the next credit card that it'll be well BEFORE the due date! That will save me another $10 for sure!! AGH!