Linked accounts for credit-card payoffs

Most monthly reminders are fixed amounts — rent, your cell phone bill, and your car insurance are all roughly the same each occurrence. However, your credit-card bill is different. It's a monthly payment, but the amount swings with how much you spent that month. If you just recorded a flat -$500 reminder for it, the forecast would be wrong every month.

The Linked Account field on a reminder solves this. It tells LedgerBear "this monthly payment pays off the balance of that credit card, so use the card's actual projected balance as the amount each month." This page explains how the link works and the rules for setting one up.

The setup

You create a linked-account reminder on the account that pays the bill, not on the card itself. In most households that's your main checking account.

1. Open the checking account that pays your credit card.
2. Click the Reminders tab.
3. Click Create.
4. Fill out the reminder form as you would for any monthly payment:
   • Payee: something recognizable like Visa Payoff or Chase Card.
   • Amount: any number — it will be overridden by the linked card's projected balance each month, but the form still requires a value. A typical average payment works as a placeholder. (Existing linked reminders will continue to use the linked card's balance regardless of what's in this field.)
   • Frequency: Monthly (required — see below).
   • Every: 1 (required — see below).
   • Start Date: a date on or after the card's first statement close.
5. In the Linked Account dropdown, pick the credit card this reminder pays off. The dropdown only shows credit cards that aren't already linked to another reminder.
6. Click Create.

What happens in the forecast

Once a linked reminder exists:

• Each month's occurrence uses the linked card's projected balance at the statement closing day, not the fixed amount in the reminder form. So if you charged $1,240 on the card this cycle, the forecast shows a $1,240 hit to checking on the payment date and drops the card's projected balance back to zero.
• The card's own Spending tab (zero-to-date by closing day) already accumulates those charges cycle by cycle. The linked reminder is what drains the accumulated balance back to zero on payoff day.
• The result is a checking-account forecast that dips realistically on the payoff date and a credit-card forecast that resets each cycle — matching how the real accounts behave.

The constraints

Because the forecast needs predictable monthly arithmetic, LedgerBear enforces three rules on linked-account reminders:

• Monthly frequency only. Linked reminders must have Frequency = Monthly. You can't link a daily, weekly, or yearly reminder. LedgerBear refuses to save a mismatch.
• Every = 1 only. The multiplier has to be 1. You can't have "every 2 months" on a linked reminder. Credit cards bill monthly, full stop.
• One linked reminder per credit card. A given card can only appear as the Linked Account on one reminder at a time. This prevents double-counting. The dropdown hides cards that are already linked elsewhere.

Violations produce specific error messages when you try to save — for example, "Linked accounts may only have monthly frequency" or "Account 'X' is already linked to 'Y' reminder in account 'Z'".

The Start Date and the closing day

LedgerBear uses the credit card's Statement Closing Day of Month (not the reminder's Start Date) to decide when each cycle ends. The Start Date on the reminder sets when the first projected payoff from the checking side lands — usually a few days after the card's closing day, matching how real due dates work.

If you change the card's closing day, future payoff dates in the forecast shift to match.

When you wouldn't want this

A few cases where a plain fixed-amount reminder is better than a linked one:

• Your monthly credit-card payment is a fixed amount by choice (e.g., you always pay only the minimum, or always pay a fixed $500). A regular monthly reminder with that fixed amount is closer to reality than a linked one.
• You're tracking the card but paying it off in unpredictable chunks. Forecasting in that case is genuinely hard; a linked reminder assumes a clean full-balance payoff each cycle.
• The card isn't connected to a checking account in your LedgerBear household (e.g., a work card where reimbursement flows are separate). Just track the card's transactions and ignore the payoff side.

Unlinking

To unlink, open the reminder (pencil icon on the Reminders tab) and set the Linked Account dropdown back to blank, then save. The reminder becomes a plain fixed-amount one using the Amount you set. You can also delete the reminder entirely if that's simpler.