Bills Due Before Payday? the dates can be changed, and hardly anyone knows it

The thing nobody tells you

Most bills arrive with a due date printed on them, and nearly everyone treats that date the way they treat the amount: as a fact about the world. It isn't. For a lot of what a household pays, the date is just a setting, and you can change it for free, in minutes, permanently.

Paid Monthly, Billed Weekly? aligning the dates makes this point. This chapter is how to actually do it — which dates move, in what order, and what to do when moving them isn't enough.

What moves and what doesn't

Every major card company will change your due date: Chase, American Express, Citi, Discover, Capital One, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Synchrony. It's usually done in the app or with one phone call, it's free, and you can change it back. There's often a limit on how often — commonly once a billing cycle, or once every 90 days — and it won't go through while the account is behind. That last one is the real catch: change the date before you need to, not in the middle of a month when you're already short.¹

Start with the credit card

If you only move one date, move the credit card's, for the reasons in A Missed Card Payment Averages $26.77, According to CFPB Data: the 2 charges to know: it's the only bill where two companies charge you for one missed day, the only one that can put your interest rate up as a penalty, and the only one that goes on your credit record after 30 days and makes everything else you borrow more expensive. It's also, conveniently, the easiest date on the whole list to change.

One thing to know: moving the due date usually moves the date your statement is produced as well, which shifts the whole cycle — when you're charged interest, when it's reported, and which purchases land where. That's a reason to make the change once and leave it alone rather than keep tinkering.

The mortgage has slack in it

You generally can't move a mortgage due date. What you can use instead is the fact that you aren't late straight away: payments are usually due on the 1st and not counted late until the 16th, and on a normal fixed-rate mortgage, paying on the 12th instead of the 1st doesn't change what you're charged for that month. On the biggest bill most households have, that's up to two weeks of room that almost nobody uses.

Two warnings. This works on ordinary mortgages where interest is worked out monthly. It does not work on loans where interest builds up daily — most car loans are like this, and paying later genuinely costs you more. Check which sort you have. And never let a payment slip past the late date, where a charge and a mark on your credit record are both waiting.

The order to do it in

1. Find the lowest your balance gets — where your account sits at its worst point in the month, after everything scheduled has come out (Paid Monthly, Billed Weekly? aligning the dates). Not the average. That one date is what everything else is aimed at.
2. See which bills land in the risky stretch — the days between that low point and your next payday.
3. Move the credit card first, to three to five days after you get paid. Not the same day: money arrives at different times and can be held.
4. Then the gas, electricity and phone — usually just a request, and often no limit on how many times.
5. Look at your low point again. Moving two bills usually sorts it out. If it hasn't, keep going.
6. Only then think about saving up a cushion. That solves the same problem using money you may not have. Do the free things first.

The order matters because each step costs more than the one before it. Most households never get as far as step 6.

When moving the dates isn't enough

Sometimes the bills genuinely won't fit before the money arrives — the rent is fixed on the 1st, you're paid on the 20th, and no amount of rearranging closes a nineteen-day gap. Three honest options are left, best first:

Ask to split the bill across two paydays. Some landlords and most utility companies will take half on one date and half on another. That turns one big bill before payday into two smaller ones after it, and it's the most useful thing on this list that hardly anyone asks for.

Change banks (Frequent Overdrafters Pay $380 a Year, According to CFPB Data: 4 things to look up). If you can't close the gap, make the gap cheap: an allowance to go $50 under and a day to fix it turns most remaining misses into nothing at all, and a bank that charges nothing turns all of them into nothing.

Get a month ahead — put aside enough to cover the bills that fall in the risky stretch. This is the expensive option, which is why it's last: by definition it needs money the household hasn't got. But it's permanent, and The First $1,000 Does the Most Work: how much buffer you actually need is where you build it.

Worth noticing: when money is tight the first two options are the whole answer, because the third one isn't available. That's the opposite of how this is usually taught, where "build up an emergency fund" comes first. Telling someone with $120 spare a month to save up a month's expenses before fixing anything is telling them to do the hardest thing first.

Where Plenee fits

Plenee has both sides of the calendar, so it can do the bit most people can't do for themselves: name which dates to move and what to move them to. Not "you might want to review your due dates" — move the card from the 5th to the 18th and the electricity from the 3rd to the 22nd, and the worst your account gets goes from −$180 to +$400. And because it works the month out again after each change, you can see the effect before you pick up the phone.

The takeaway

The dates can be changed and hardly anyone knows it. Find the lowest point your balance reaches, move the credit card to three to five days after payday, then the utilities, then look again — free, permanent, and working within one cycle. If that still doesn't close the gap, ask to split a bill across two paydays, or move to a bank where being a bit short doesn't cost anything. Save up the cushion last, not first.