The start of the New Year is a perfect time to evaluate your financial situation. Are you happy with your income? Do you have too much credit card debt? Are you making responsible purchasing decisions and staying within your budget?

One change you might want to consider for the New Year is improving your credit card records. It’s much easier to know where you stand on other financial issues when you can lay out your spending choices and behaviours in a well-organized manner.

Why Credit Card Spending Records are Important

It’s nice that credit card companies make statements available online. They’re easy to review that way — they’re convenient. Convenience isn’t everything though. Thoroughness is equally important.

Not only is it a good idea to review your credit card statement online, but you should also keep your own spending records. Having your own records allows you to verify the accuracy of records provided by your bank (you’ll catch small unauthorised charges more easily for example, and you’ll be able to verify things like rewards points based on what you actually spent).

How to Keep Credit Card Spending Records

It isn’t difficult to keep your own spending records for credit card transactions. The best thing to do is to simply write them down. Write down transactions as they happen, and you’ll always know what your available balance is (not to mention it makes things easier than recording transactions from a whole pile of receipts all in one sitting later on).

You should also keep receipts for everything you charge to your credit card. Not only are they good to have around to verify information on your credit card statement later, but they might be necessary to take advantage of purchase protection options. Quite a few credit cards offer purchase cover, extended warranties, or both — like the Suncorp Platinum credit card.

The great thing about resolutions for the New Year is that they’re just goals. Those goals can be set at any time and it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been using your credit card. Set a goal for your new credit card. Set a goal for a card you’ve been using for years. If you aren’t happy with your current record-keeping system for tracking credit card spending, consider trying something new!

Treat yourself to a small ledger for writing down transactions or a new filing system to keep receipts safely tucked away in the New Year. It only takes small changes to make a big difference, and being more aware of your credit card spending is always a good thing.