Regulators adopt new credit card rules

Finally! I've been pretty mad about the idea of 'Double cycle billing' for a long, long time. It's about time someone did something about it.

Let's say that on 11/20 you get your statement, and it's $1200. Since the statement, you've racked up another $500 in balance. When you go to pay your statement balance, you only pay $1150. On the NEXT statement, how much should you pay in interest?

A NORMAL person would say that you should by your interest rate (say 13%, which is typical of many credit cards but can go as high as 18% or more) times the unpaid balance: $50.00 * 0.13 = $6.50 in interest. So the next statement (assuming you didn't make any other purchases since you paid your bill) would be the $50 you didn't pay, the $6.50 in interest and the $500 new balance. But you'd be WRONG!

Instead, they do the following: they take the AVERAGE balance from the last two billing cycles and charge you interest on THAT balance. And they do that for TWO billing cycles. Which is just stupid. Especially if you pay the entire balance the next month...you would STILL see some interest being applied (thanks to the averaging).

The other aspect I don't understand is how they can charge it on the $500 in new purchases? How can I be charged any interest on that amount at all when the amount isn't due yet? That pisses me off. And I don't think these new policies actually address this issue either.

Oh well...at least we're a step closer.