I’m changing the way I pay rent again. I pay my rent via credit card so that I can earn the points. Recently my rent increased because I am leasing the entire unit.

 

I will still be paying via credit card but keep reading to see what has changed.

 

(If you are not reading this post at www.howisavemoney.net or in your feed reader, it may have been stolen from my site.)

In the past, I used my MasterCard to pay rent and paid a small convenience fee. I included the fee in my budget, effectively making my rent amount larger. The lease change required two separate payments.

 

My complex allows roommates to pay for each other. The accounts manager said I could just do one payment and place a note saying the ‘extra’ payment was for the other room.

Old fees

Here are sample (e.g. just for illustration) fees:

-MasterCard— $2

-Visa————-$4

New fees

It made sense to use my MasterCard to pay rent when I was only doing one room. Fast forward to the new lease which is double. The fees are now as follows:

-MasterCard— $4

-Visa————-$4

 

You see that the Visa fee is constant no matter how much the payment is. The MasterCard changes based on the rent amount.

 

My first thought was therefore to just use the Visa for the double payment….which I did.

 

I then realized that the total fee would come out to EXACTLY the same based on the newer amounts.

 

I could also save myself some effort of not having to email every time to note it is a roommate payment. The office then has to move the credit balance from my first lease over to the second one.

 

This means I can now go back to using the MasterCard and just pay for each room separately.