One tip you forgot to mention is you can contact your card company and revert to a traditional limit where any transaction above the limit is immediately declined. You no longer have the luxury of going over the limit but you can no longer expect this trick over the many credit card companies pull. Just a note: it took talking with several card representatives before I found out this is actually an option with your card. The representatives are trained to hide this well or don’t know their products. So do enable this option if you’re revolted and disgusted by being hit with overlimit fees, because you do have the choice to control it.

As for the story of my first overlimit? Even though I had an immaculate credit history, it is short-lived. It took bitching, moaning, whining, threatening to cancel my card and following through before they called back to inform me that they’ve reversed the charge. After I confirmed the reversal I reinstated the account and had the representative immediately switch the account to use hard limits.

I don’t keep track of my balances, so I don’t always know when I am close. The best solution is to call and ask your card companies to put a hard limit. All transactions that will put you over the limit should be declined. They might resist you and said that they don’t have a way to do that. Don’t believe them. If there really was no way for them to set a hard limit, you would be charge any transactions and they would not be able to decline them.