Are you the type of consumer who likes to take advantage of your credit card’s interest free days each month? Have you ever been surprised to find that you didn’t get interest free days when you were expecting them, only to be charged the interest you were trying to avoid?

There are several reasons you might not always get interest free days on all or part of your credit card bill. Here are some of those reasons.

3 Reasons You Might Not Get Interest Free Days

1.    You didn’t pay off all previous purchases in your last statement period. To get interest free days on new purchases, you generally have to pay off your entire previous balance, and it must be paid by the due date. So a partial payment or late payment can result in losing the following month’s interest free days. Making the minimum payment isn’t enough.

2.    You initiated a balance transfer and haven’t paid it all off yet. As I already mentioned, interest free days are usually contingent on paying off your entire balance by the previous statement period’s due date. That includes fully paying off any balance transfers — not just recent purchases. It’s a good idea not to transfer balances to a credit card that you use for purchases if you expect to take advantage of interest free shopping.

3.    You took out a cash advance or made a cash equivalent purchase. If you took out a cash advance (taking out cash at an ATM against your credit limit), you will generally start accumulating interest on that cash advance immediately. Cash advances aren’t eligible for interest free days (or at least I haven’t come across a credit card where they are). The same goes for “cash equivalent transactions.” That definition can vary a bit more from one credit card company to another, but they’re basically other transactions that the credit card company treats as a cash advance. One example is over-the-counter bill payments.

How to Make Sure You Get Interest Free Days in the Future

The best way to ensure interest free days on future purchases is to use a dedicated credit card solely for new purchases where you want to avoid interest. That gets you around the issues with balance transfers and cash advances. At a bare minimum only use that card for smaller balance transfers that you can pay off during the first few months, so you don’t have to give up interest free days for long. Also, it’s important to make sure you pay off the balance on that dedicated credit card in full every month. That’s the only way you can continue with interest free financing for your next month’s purchases using that card.

Not everyone takes advantage of interest free days but for credit card users who do, it can seem like a real blow when they see unexpected interest charges on their bill after they worked so hard to avoid them. Don’t fall into that trap. Use the tips above to make sure you keep getting the interest free days you’re used to.