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Do credit card statement/closing dates follow a pattern? I'm writing a program to compute credit card interest, and it's be useful to calculate closing dates vs entering them manually from my existing statements.

EDIT: OK, here are the actual closing dates from the cards where I couldn't divine a pattern.

FIA CARD SERVICES:

February 12, 2011 
January 13, 2011 
December 14, 2010 
November 13, 2010 
October 15, 2010 
September 14, 2010 
August 13, 2010 
July 15, 2010 
June 14, 2010 
May 14, 2010 
April 14, 2010 
March 15, 2010 
February 12, 2010 
January 14, 2010 
December 14, 2009 
November 13, 2009 

NATIONAL BANK:

3/6/2011 
2/3/2011 
1/6/2011 
12/6/2010 
11/5/2010 
8/6/2010 
7/6/2010 
6/4/2010 
5/6/2010 
4/5/2010 
3/5/2010 

CITIBANK:

02/23/2011 
01/25/2011 
12/23/2010 
11/23/2010 
10/25/2010 
09/23/2010 
08/24/2010 
07/23/2010 
06/23/2010 
05/25/2010 
04/23/2010 
03/24/2010 

NMEFCU:

3/10/2011 
2/7/2011 
1/10/2011 
12/10/2010 
11/9/2010 
10/10/2010 
9/9/2010 
8/10/2010 
7/11/2010 
6/9/2010 
5/10/2010 
4/9/2010 
3/10/2010 
2/8/2010 
1/10/2010 
12/9/2009

Can someone divine a pattern for any of these? (and, yes, I realize that I'm now spending more time trying to answer this question that it would take to just manually record the dates).

EDIT: I checked w/ my card companies. For NMEFCU, adding 25 to the close date is the magic: the close date is chosen so that the due date is always on the 4th of the month. This formula almost works for FIA CARD SERVICES, but not quite. Still looking at the others, but credit cards appear to either set the close date to be constant (I didn't list those cases above) or set the due date to be constant.

EDIT: NATIONAL BANK: adding 25 days almost always is the end of the month.

EDIT: Citibank sent me this (self-contradicting) reply:

Your payment is due on approximately the 25th of each 
month. Approximately your statement cycles every 29 days.
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3 Answers 3

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My guess: they are giving you a constant number of days between when the bill is sent and when it is due. Due dates are usually set either:

  1. same date each month IE the 3rd of each month.

  2. same day IE first thursday of the month.

Note: due date might vary based on weekends.

Number of days in the month - date on bill should be pretty constant if due date option #1 is being used. Note how Feb dates were usually earlier, since it is a shorter month.

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  • Thanks. I think we reached the same conclusion at the same time!
    – user1731
    Commented Mar 20, 2011 at 6:52
  • @barry: if you believe this is the correct answer, you should accept it. (hit the check mark button under the answer score)
    – David Oneill
    Commented Mar 21, 2011 at 14:42
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    Done. I'm a little bad about doing that.
    – user1731
    Commented Mar 24, 2011 at 15:06
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    @barry you can always become better. Go through your ticket list, and see if there are answers worth accepting :)
    – David Oneill
    Commented Mar 24, 2011 at 19:49
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Check with your bank, usually a statement is either at the same day of month (e.g.: every 15th of the month), or every 30 days (e.g: March 15th, April 14th, May 14th, so forth).

From my experience, most credit cards use the same day of month strategy. Keep in mind that if the day is not a business day (e.g.: weekend), the statement is closed either the previous or the next business day.

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  • Same day of the month would be great, but most of my cards don't seem to do this. The 30 days might be what they're doing, I'll take a look.
    – user1731
    Commented Mar 13, 2011 at 22:43
  • Well... I have several credit cards, but they all come from only 3 issuers, all of the three use the same day of month. But as I mentioned - that's only my personal experience.
    – littleadv
    Commented Mar 13, 2011 at 22:47
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Each bank is different. Usually in my experience for newer credit card accounts, there is a specific number of days in a billing cycle (something like 28) and then a 20-25 day grace period.

Older accounts usually have 30+ day billing cycles. Back in the 90's, many cards also had 30-40 day grace periods.

The language specific to your card is in the card agreement.

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  • Thanks @duffbeer703. In this case, I'm talking solely about billing cycles, not grace periods, and not due dates. I'm hoping to find some reasonable pattern.
    – user1731
    Commented Mar 15, 2011 at 0:25

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