Credit card statement dates follow pattern?
My guess:  they are giving you a constant number of days between when the bill is sent and when it is due.  Due dates are usually set either: same date each month IE the 3rd of each month. same day IE first thursday of the month. Note: due date might vary based on weekends. Number of days in the month - date on bill should be pretty constant if due date option #1 is being used.  Note how Feb dates were usually earlier, since it is a shorter month. Check with your bank, usually a statement is either at the same day of month (e.g.: every 15th of the month), or every 30 days (e.g: March 15th, April 14th, May 14th, so forth). From my experience, most credit cards use the same day of month strategy. Keep in mind that if the day is not a business day (e.g.: weekend), the statement is closed either the previous or the next business day. Each bank is different. Usually in my experience for newer credit card accounts, there is a specific number of days in a billing cycle (something like 28) and then a 20-25 day grace period. Older accounts usually have 30+ day billing cycles. Back in the 90's, many cards also had 30-40 day grace periods. The language specific to your card is in the card agreement.
"Its called a ""Grace Period"" and you are not paying interest on the 0% BT, you are paying interest on the amount you spent in purchases If you do not pay your balance in full by the due date your grace period ends. This means that you have to pay interest on the purchased amount from the day it is made. This is why when you do a balance transfer the card should be put in the Sock Drawer until the BT is paid off. In order to restore the grace period you must pay the balance in full and the grace period will start during the Next Payment Cycle. Lets Assume: Statement cuts on the 1st and Due date is the 20th. you make the minimum payment of $10 Balance now is $100 Since you have a balance of $100 from the previous statement and a new purchase of $50.00, when the next statement cuts you will have to pay interest according to the terms on the $50.00 portion. In order to get the grace period back you will have to pay in full and wait for the next cycle In case I did not explain it well here is a quote from creditcards dot com website: The cost of carrying a balance   This is because carrying a balance of   any size into the next billing cycle means there is no grace period on   your purchases during that cycle. The card company will begin charging   interest on your purchases the day you make them. So leaving even $1   in unpaid balance on your card will cost you considerably more than   the measly finance charges on that dollar. To see how this works let's consider an imaginary card user named   Sally. She's so happy she got a new credit card that she charges   $1,500 in purchases on the first day of her monthly billing cycle.   After the cycle ends, Sally pays off the entire $1,500 by the due   date, wiping her balance to zero. As a result, her purchases during   the second month are also free of interest. She has used her grace   period wisely to avoid finance charges. What happens if Sally leaves just $1 of her balance from the first   month unpaid? That $1 begins to accrue interest starting the first day   of the billing cycle. It's just $1, so the interest is not a big deal   -- but because she used up her grace period without paying off her entire debt, her new purchases during the second month also start to   get hit with interest charges immediately, starting the day of the   transaction. Assuming she makes another $1,500 in purchases at the   average annual interest rate of about 13 percent, that means $16 in   finance charges for the month. If Sally repeats this pattern, the   interest costs add up to $190 over the course of a year." I'm in the US, and I can't speak for all credit cards, but I have done this in the past. I've paid extra on my credit card, and had a positive balance on my credit card account. The purchases made after paying extra were applied to the balance, and if there was money left over on the statement closing date, I didn't owe anything that month.  Of course, I didn't incur any interest charges, but I never pay interest anyway, as I always pay my statement in full each month and never take a cash advance on my credit card.  You could call your credit card company and ask them what will happen, or if you are feeling adventurous, you could just send them some extra money and see what happens. Most likely, they will just apply it to your account and give you a positive balance. Yes.  For $15 it's not worth anyone's time to dig deep just for this specific occurrence. What you should do, however, is keep an eye on your credit card bills and accounts and watch for any other suspicious activity.  It is possible that your number was stolen somehow and someone is using it fraudulently, so you want to be on the lookout in case they try to use it again.  However, your credit card company is going to be much, much better than you at detecting patterns of fraud, which is why you should leave it to them unless and until you actually see more suspicious activity. I don't use debit cards, but if I did I would review that portion of the statement. I look at my credit card statements pretty closely, and probably catch one or two mistakes or things I want to question every year. "I'm not convinced this is completely possible without additional data.  I'm categorizing my purchases now, and I keep running into things like ""was this hardware store purchase for home repair, hobby tools and supplies, cookware, ..."" Ditto for department stores, ditto for cash purchases which appear only as an ATM withdrawal. Sometimes I remember, sometimes I guess, sometimes I just give up. In the end, this budget tracking isn't critical for me so that's good enough. If you really want accuracy, though, I think you are stuck with keeping all your receipts, of taking notes, so you can resolve these gaps." "PC MasterCard recently added this as a new feature to their online system. It lets you see ""Pending Authorizations"" for your card when you log in. Their email said: Along with your purchases, you'll see a list of every transaction that's been approved, but not yet applied to your balance. You'll be able to identify these with the word “Pending” in the date column.  Here's a link with more information: http://pcfinancial.ca/pendingauthorization/" This is interesting.  The application I'm putting together is more along the lines of automating the research process for a financial professional using a personal algorithm of his.  The end goal is to provide him an alert to email when a new report is filed and if his criteria are met based on that report and past reports.  Thanks anyway. You can take a shortcut and make a few cumulative transactions, maybe just estimate how much of your spending landed in each of your budget categories, but you will lose a lot of the value that you were building for yourself by tracking your spending during the earlier months. I reconcile my budget and categorize my spending on a monthly basis. It's always a chore to pull out the big stack of receipts and plow through them, but I've learned the value of having an accurate picture of where all my money went. There is no clean way to fake it. You can either take the time and reconcile your spending, or you can take a short cut. It probably renders your efforts to track everything from the beginning of the year invalid though. If you want to start over this month (as you did at the beginning of the year) that would probably be a cleaner way to reconcile things.