<prompt> Human: I know this is the most basic of questions but Im still confused. Its my first month of having a credit card and I fully intend to pay off the full balance every month. I just dont understand how much I need to pay since I use my card almost every day so it always has some balance. How do the cycles work? If I pay off the full amount owed 2 days before the payment date but then continue to make transactions for the next 2 days will I be charged interest on the balance from those transactions? Assistant: Just pay off the balance every month.Every month, the credit card company will send you a statement. On the monthly statement, there is a statement balance. You must pay the statement balance by the payment deadline. Usually you have about 20-30 days to make this payment. If you make this payment after having already made additional purchases, your payment will not reduce the balance to 0, but thats okay. If you want to pay more than the statement balance e.g. pay the current balance or any value between the statement balance and current balance, thats fine too.If you pay less than the statement balance but at least the minimum payment, then youll have to pay interest, but will still be in good standing.If you pay less than the minimum payment, or make the payment late, or make no payments at all, then youll have to pay interest, pay a late fee, your APR may be increased to the penalty APR, etc bla bla bla. Dont do this.Human: So that makes perfect sense. And thanks. I guess where I get confused is that the first statement said I owed X by 224, so I immediately paid that entire amount. Then, the pending transactions went through the next day and now it says I owe the balance of those pending transactions by 224 as well. Am I a dummy for being a little confused here? I figured after I paid the amount due on the statement in full it would tell me I have 0 due until they give me my next statement.  <response>: Youre not a dummy; this confuses many people. Heres the issue. Youre not looking at the statement, youre looking at the website. The website shows two confusing facts: When your payment is due for your statement balance, and how much of a balance you currently have. The balance you currently have is not your statement balance. To see your statement balance you have to look at your actual statement, which is typically downloadable as a PDF.I think this is a case where the Internet has made life more confusing. In the olden days you would just get a statement in the mail, and it said you must pay this amount by 224. Nowhere did it say anything about pending transactions or that donut you bought with your CC yesterday, because they had put the statement in the mail sometime last week so there was no way that those more-recent things could possibly appear on your statement. You still had a current balance but there was no way of finding out what it was unless you called the company, and it was obvious that such a thing didnt matter anyway. 