Organizing Your Accounts

Before he leaves for work each day, my husband usually says three things to me:

"Have a great day."

"I love you."

"Which card should I be using?"

Because we currently have ten different accounts open (and are account holders for each other), we have an insane amount of credit cards in our wallets.

It gets confusing.

To combat the chaos, we have to be extremely organized in our spending. We keep this on an Excel file that is honest-to-goodness entitled, "Jessa's Nerd Book of Travel Stuff with the Credit Card Thing." (That was not my doing.)

We keep track of:

-The date the account was opened

-The kind of card

-Who opened the account

-The incentive amount

-Minimum spend amount

-Date when the minimum must be met

-Annual fee

-How much we've currently spent

-Whether the incentive has been met

-If the account is opened or closed

-We also have a special notes section where I keep track of special perks or what we plan to use the points for.

If this seems overwhelming, that's because it definitely can be. Even though we are organized in all aspects of our budgeting, we still run into times when we weren't as careful as we could have been. So having a good foundation to begin with is essential because it makes those small mistakes a little less disastrous.

Remember, if you need to make a $3000 minimum spend by June 1st, and you don't hit that mark until June 3rd, you don't get the bonus. Usually, your time begins once you open the account and not once you actually receive the card. That can be a big difference! Additionally, if you only spend $1999 of a required $2000--guess what? You don't get the bonus. Don't let a little accounting error stand in the way of your free travel.

Go forth and organize!

#basics