We all know that when your debts are a problem the last thing you want to do is incur further debt by getting late fees added onto your balance, a simple and often overlooked method to avoid this is to set up a direct debit based on the minimum payment. You then have the option of over paying the normal way......

Thoughts?

The only problem I can see with direct payments is when you are living paycheck to paycheck and you dont have a sufficient balance on the day the debit is set. The problem being most people get paid on every other thursday for example, but the dates move around each month, maybe the direct payment comes out this month on the tuesday before, you lose a load of your paycheck through overdraft fees which are way worse than a late payment fee. In my experience with US Bank when this has happened, I get charged $35 for going over then $35 per day over then $35, $35 each time you use the account in overdraft, so say you think you have $20 left in there and goto macdonalds or somewhere and spend $8 that bigmac just cost you $43 ($* + $35). then $35 when my paycheck goes in because this is using the account in overdraft. this happened to me twice last year, between $100 and $300 per time, a girl at work was saying with another bank she was into them for $300+ for the same reason.

Now wouldn't it be nice if some bright spark decided, hey, you know what, instead of billing on X day of every month, lets do every other thursday! This would work for things like insurance etc.

Frankly I just avoid the credit cards altogether. That has been a great help to me.