Checking your credit card statement periodically is a healthy financial habit owing to its numerous benefits, such as:
- Giving details about your transactions
- Providing an overview of your spending pattern
- Helping detect unauthorised transactions
Apart from them, one of the most crucial upsides is that it helps you manage and budget your expenses. Not only will you be able to meet your expenses stress free but you can also avoid high interest charges and late-payment penalties.
Wondering how this can be possible? Find out the benefits of checking your statement here!
Helps Review Your Spends Regularly
A critical step towards managing your finances is analysing your credit card statement at regular intervals. This helps you understand your spending habits and track your expenses effortlessly.
Now that you are well aware of your monthly expenses, you can decide whether or not to reduce them. You can categorise them based on your needs and wants, plan a personal budget and avoid unnecessary expenses. Be it the daily coffee shop runs or getting branded footwear, you can take the right call!
Helps Keep a Check on Your Available Credit Limit
Initiating regular credit card balance checks is another way to help you stay on top of your finances. With this practice, you can not only control your spending but also help you stay within the approved limit and maintain a lower credit utilisation ratio.
After all, you wouldn’t want it to cross the value of 30%, as that can hurt your credit score and affect future credit approvals. Remember, utilising the credit limit to the minimum can help you to cover any unforeseen expenses that may arise.
Helps Assess the Associated Charges
Any fees the credit card issuer levies on your credit card also get documented in your card statements. So, by checking it thoroughly at the end of each month, it’s easy to keep track of various charges associated with your card.
Some of the common fees levied include:
- Joining fees
- Annual renewal fee
- Late payment fee
- Overlimit fee
- ATM cash withdrawal charges
With this information, you can find ways to reduce the charges and, thus, decrease your overall credit card costs significantly. What’s more, you can check if the issuer charged you incorrectly. If so, you can immediately raise an issue by contacting the customer care team and resolve it at the earliest.
Helps Use the Mobile App for Effective Budgeting
Nowadays, most card issuers have their applications that help you keep a tab on your spending. Through these apps, you can check your credit card transactions, the available credit limit, the next bill payment date and much more.
This allows a convenient way to keep a check on essential details related to your credit card and manage it better. What’s more, some issuers also have a dedicated expense tracker that allows you to set a monthly budget, ensuring that you don’t go overboard with your expenses.
Helps Pay Attention to Recurring Charges
As is a known fact that there are umpteen monthly expenses all of us have to manage, some of the most common ones being:
- Electricity bills
- House rent
- School fees
- EMI payments
- Gym memberships
- Entertainment subscriptions
While you can opt for the auto-debit facility to save time and avoid missing these payments, there are chances that you may totally forget about these payments. Reviewing your card statement every month can help you review these payments and eliminate some of them if needed.
Helps Check for Suspicious and Unauthorised Transactions
With a rise in online frauds and scams, keeping your finances safe needs to be your top priority. Some of the most common scams you can fall prey to include:
- Identity theft and identity fraud
- Overcharge scam
- Skimming scam
- Phishing scam
- Interest-rate reduction scam
- The hot spot scam
By thoroughly checking your card statement, you can spot these transactions and report them to the concerned authorities immediately.
If not checked on time, the expenses incurred by the scammer or fraudster using your credit card will get added to your next credit card bill. And you’ll end up paying for it, increasing your bill amount for no reason. Such dues can hurt your credit score if not repaid on time.
Knowing when to adjust your budget and spending habits can help you save money and unlock the full potential of your card. If you plan to get an additional credit card to enjoy better financial flexibility, go with the One Credit Card.
With this credit card, you enjoy easy conversion of your big-ticket spends into budget-friendly EMIs, discounts on dining and shopping, and up to 5X rewards on top spends. What’s more, you enjoy zero joining fees, no annual fee and no charges for redeeming your reward points. Apply now to get started.
