Like most Americans, building your credit is a longstanding task that determine a lot of future. If you're planning on buying a house, or a car it is important to maintain pristine credit standing in order to build a solid relationship with your credit company. Paying your credit card bills on time, and with the correct amount is imperative to improving your credit score and building a substantial line of credit.

Because maintaining your credit is such an important topic, we at CancelWizard decided to write about it. Here are 10 tips to managing your credit card payments:

1. As you sign up for a credit card, read its terms and conditions. This is what gets people in trouble down the line because they may not fully understand their financial obligations with the card.
2. Limit the amount of credit cards you sign up for. It’s difficult to manage even more than five credit cards. Realize that though many credit cards have alluring sign-on incentives, down the road you are stuck with managing multiple payments and credit cards with high interest or annual percentage rates (APR).
3. The number one way to improve your credit is to be fiscally accountable. Timely payment is the easiest way to improve or to ruin your credit status.
4. Have the payment automatically deducted from your bank account at least five business days before the due date on your statement. This ensures that your payments are made on time.
5. Keep track of when your credit card payments are due in your personal calendar - even if you signed up for the auto-deduct option.
6. Charge only what you can afford to pay off. Credit cards are not “free money”. If your monthly payments are not met, then you will end up way more in interest and late fees down the line.
7. If you are in financial hardship, pay off the balance of the credit card with the highest APR first. Then work your way down the line from there.
8. Once you have built up your credit score, consider consolidating your debt by moving down to fewer credit cards.
9. Don’t exceed 30% of your total credit limit for any given credit card.
10. Never skip a payment.

For many reasons, credit payments are processes incorrectly, either at the hand of the card holder or the company. For this reason, it is important to maintain accurate records of all credit card payments made. If you need to cancel a credit card payment, refer to your records and call the customer service telephone number on the back of your credit card. Explain the situation to the customer service representative, and refer to specific transaction numbers, to maintain accuracy. Better yet, look through CancelWizard’s articles to get specific tips on canceling your credit card by company.

If you are in good standing with your credit card company, then canceling a credit card payment should be fast and easy. However, it is important not to ritualistically tamper with your credit card payments for the sake of your credit rating.

Share your experiences about managing or canceling a credit card payment in the comment section under this article.