How I Pay Bills

[PRICEPLUS]

Re: How I Pay Bills

Direct deposit of checks into bank. Automatic payments into savings and investment accounts. I pay all other bills as they come in by snail mail!

[JBinKC]

Re: How I Pay Bills

I pay as many bills with a credit card as long as they don't add a surcharge. Those who charge a fee those bills are automatically taken out of my checking account on the due date. It saves on postage costs and prevents you to forget paying a bill on time.

[EHadden]

Re: How I Pay Bills

I'm sure that my simplistic method of paying bills doesn't equate with some of your ideas, but I'm throwing it out here as an idea...my wife and I are paid twice a month (she on the 5th and 20th and me on the 15th and 30th (or last day)). I set up 4 manilla folders with sheets of paper stapled onto them. Each pay period has it's own certain bills that correspond to that particular paycheck. When a bill arrives, it goes into its appropriate folder and sits until payday.

I also have a spreadsheet that lists all of our bills and their due dates, so that I could determine the appropriate pay date to pay that bill from so that it will not be paid late. I also use National City online bill pay and have not one single complaint about it. I have to allow a window of 7-10 days for the bill to make it to the company, but it usually makes it in about 4, unless I process bills on a Sunday. I have found that the only things I write checks for now are irregular expenses at work (social dues, fund-raisers for someone's kid, etc.) and for local utility bills that are easier paid by a bill drop off on my way to work.

I also download all my financial information into Quicken, which I love, because it is helping me to keep track of my financial goals. The biggest one was to cut our debt by 15% this year, as of today, it has been cut by nearly 40%.

[niki_the_tiger]

Re: How I Pay Bills

My husband gets paid every two weeks, which we get direct deposited. I have a calendar that I write all our bills on (on their due dates). Every payday, I pay all the bills that are due for that pay period. I pay most of them online, but there's a few, like our local electric company and our mortgage and rubbish removal, that I still have to send checks to.

[jhd815]

Re: How I Pay Bills

I organize my bills by the due date when I receive them and then twice a month I use my bank's online bill paying service to pay them. I started doing that in January and it is extremely easy, convenient, and best of all FREE! I only have one or two bills that I pay by check each month so I'm also saving on the cost of new checks a couple times a year.

I also have a specific amount of money automatically transferred from my checking account into my savings account at the end of each month so I'm building up my savings as well.