How can I avoid my card being automatically charged every month?

Linode automatically issues invoices on the first of every month at approximately midnight US Eastern time (UTC-0400). For users on metered billing, there can be an additional invoice or two mid-month when the amount of outstanding services reaches the set limit. Your card on file is automatically charged whenever your account balance drops below zero. That being the case, you can avoid charges to your card by making sure your account's balance never drops below $0.00 -- one method of ensuring this is by making a payment for a couple months' worth of service via PayPal. We have a great guide in the Linode Library that explains how to do this which I'll link to here.

If you'd like to stop being charged altogether, you'll need to remove any services that incur charges from your account altogether -- shutting Linodes down will not prevent charges going forward as you're still reserving resources that no one else can use, even if you aren't using those resources yourself.

Alternatively, if you simply need a payment extension, feel free to reach out to the Support team via ticket and we'll be glad to help.