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I don’t understand my credit card balance?

31 replies

Zoommeout · 12/07/2025 11:34

Just that really.
ive got minimal going out of my credit card.

  • 3 reoccurring card payments (DS set up mobile phone pay monthly and a club my children attend)
  • I will use cc to pay for clothes (non grocery items eg sch uniform, a new lipstick etc)
  • groceries when I’ve ran out of money

other than the 3 reoccurring, the others are few transactions. So eg if I’ve spent £8 in Argos for a new water bottle , I will transfer £8 so that I can see I’ve paid it . The reason why i started paying this way was because I can’t understand where the ‘extra’is coming from on the current balance as I like to clear every month.
if there have been eg 10 grocery purchases I lump these together snd pay it.

its driving me nuts. I’ve done it today and I’ve got £144 balance unaccounted for. No charges listed on statement . (I mean current balance not statement as I understand the diff of these)

what is going on???

OP posts:
taxguru · 12/07/2025 19:38

Ignore what the website/app screen says and print off the actual monthly statements - all banks make these available for you to view/print as a pdf on their websites/apps.

Once you have the actual monthly statements in front of you, you;ll have better visibility as to how the balance is made up as the individual transactions, ins, outs, charges, interest etc will be obvious.

I suspect your bank's app screen isn't showing everything in an obvious manner.

I'm an accountant and I hate using screen prints of apps/websites provided by clients as some banks' systems are awful. I always tell clients to provide the monthly statements as pdf or paper prints which show the transactions far better than an assortment of app screens.

Apps, being "Live" often change a few days later, i.e. if you look on it today, some spending today may not be shown, but look on Monday, and they won't be shown on Monday, they'll be backdated to today's date. So if you did, say, a daily screen print, they'd never show on any day!

anon2022anon · 12/07/2025 19:45

Mostnof the time, the credit card is split into months on the top of the box online. If you think that your balance should be £0, click through each month and find the opening balance.
If for example the opening balance in May is 0, but June is £144, then it's during the may transactions that you need to start looking to see what you haven't made. You can then print or write out the transactions, and cross off anything you've definitely paid- so Asda £24, £24 received, cross them both off. You should then be left with things that don't balance or have a repayment.

BastardesEverywhere · 12/07/2025 22:00

You are confusing things by constantly paying in amounts- I would wait for your statement

This.

If you want to use the card but keep money aside to cover each transaction, just open another instant savings account or a pot if you're with Monzo etc, and move the equivalent money into there as you spend it.

WannabeMathematician · 14/07/2025 19:41

When you started paying off each transaction did you have a balance of zero and no pending transactions? If not it could be that your accounting was off at the beginning and you just been carrying that balance through.

RentalWoesNotFun · 14/07/2025 19:57

go back to the first accurate statement tell us the closing balance.

then go to the one after when it starts to go wrong and tell us what each line says. For example:
opening balance £100,
transactions £50,
payments to account £60,
interest £5,
closing balance £95

sunseasex · 15/07/2025 16:55

I would get paper statements, tbh. This is what I do. When the statement arrives, I make sure every entry is correct. If it's not clear what the item is for - maybe it just says "Amazon" then I write next to the entry what the purchase was.

If you're looking at the balance in the App, remember that the balance won't reflect any pending entries.

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