Comments (scroll down to add your own):

1. My financials are almost completely automated and paperless; I’ve even set up my credit cards to automatically pay off the full balance each month. Although American Express required me to request and mail in a paper form, so they don’t always make it easy.

   I find that this saves time and keeps me from paying late fees when I’m traveling and forget to pay a bill (although they would always reverse the fee as a “one-time courtesy” when I called, it was still a hassle.)

   The only $ decision I make each month is what ETFs to invest in based on how my allocation is looking against my targets.

   To be more fully automated, I wish there was a program that would download the PDF statements from each of my accounts and save them somewhere each month. Do you know of anything?

   Comment by AnHonestMillion — Sep 16th 2009 @ 9:41 am

2. FYI – it is NCUA that insures credit union accounts and not CUNA. http://www.ncua.gov

   Comment by Steve — Sep 16th 2009 @ 9:57 am

3. I only have a single bill that is a fixed amount every month (mortgage) — that one can be automated. The other 6 bills are utilities (varying amount) and a credit card (varying amount), so I absolutely do not automate them. For those, I still receive the paper statement, so I can study them for errors, and then I use the online bill pay (manually) so the bank sends them a check for payment. I also pay my bills twice a month (when I get payed), so I keep track of which bills I pay so I can catch any missing bills.

   I do not allow any company direct access to my accounts — if they erroneously ‘pull’ to much money out, you are already in a bad spot trying to get money back.

   But, I do know other people that set things up the way you describe — just not my comfort level. The ‘automatic savings’ idea is a must!

   Comment by BG — Sep 16th 2009 @ 10:30 am

4. Automation has been the best thing I ever did for my finances. I have a free personal finance account at yodlee.com, which links all my accounts. I get bill reminders, daily updates, and net worth statements. It saves the information for all of the linked accounts so I can look up the password for some obscure account that I rarely use. I get all of my bill electronically that are available that way. I pay my monthly HOA dues via a monthly scheduled online bill pay. I automatically transfer money to savings (both emergency and short term for things like vacation) each month. I love being able to check all those things at once. I feel very on top of things and I have started setting net worth goals for us. It’s been great.

   Comment by Sarah — Sep 16th 2009 @ 12:35 pm

5. BG,

   I think you misunderstood or it wasn’t clear in the original article — you can use online bill pay for variable bills as well. Setting up a payment date and set amount are entirely optional, and at NO TIME does the business have any access whatsoever to your account. Online bill pay is a PUSH from your bank, NOT a pull by the other business.

   My wife handles our main account and all bills, and uses online bill pay for all bills. At our credit union site you can go into the bill management section of the site and set up a bill, say a credit card payment. You put in the name of the card company and it looks in its database to see if it can handle electronic payments. If so you only enter the account number, and then whenever you want to pay a bill you type in the amount you want to pay and the date you want it paid on and on that date the bank will electronically send that amount to the company. If the company is not in the database, then you type in the address and they will then cut an actual paper check for you and mail it.

   No business has electronic access to our account at any time. The entire process is strictly under our control, at our convenience, at all times. I really can’t imagine going back to the bad old days.

   Comment by Dave — Sep 16th 2009 @ 12:51 pm

6. Oh, also, we use multiple accounts for different reasons. We have a main account that our pay goes into automatically. We each have an individual (joint) account that we debit an “allowance” each payday. We also have a “bill payment” account that is used as stated above (using online bill payments), that way EVEN IF we wound up in a weird situation where a payment was screwed up, it would never touch our primary money pot. My wife figures out the bills for each pay period and transfers over the $$ amount required into the bill account and sets up the automated payments as soon as she finds out what the amounts are for various bills. All our bills are paid within a few days of payday, out of one dedicated account. We even pay our car loans to the same bank out of the bill account’s savings account, so that is separate from even the rest of the regular bills.

   Doing this also means we can do things like split the mortgage payment in half and pay half on each pay period into the bill account, and still remain 1/2 to 1 full payment ahead in the account at all times as a buffer.

   Works great and I sleep very well at night now that I gave up tinkering with her daily money management.

   *EDIT* I realize the above may sound very complicated, but its actually ridiculously simple in practice once you get over the “one big pile of money” mindset and divvy it up for specific purposes. And like I said, we don’t really lose sleep over money anymore because of this process.

   Comment by Dave — Sep 16th 2009 @ 12:56 pm

7. We’re totally automated as well, and it’s wonderful. The only note of caution is to keep an eye on statements. We have our phone, TV, cable and wireless all on one bill, automatically paid by credit card. Convenient yes, but it can quickly become a little “out of sight, out of mind”. I recently looked and noticed that the rates had gone up considerably. Nothing that a phone call didn’t fix, but still important to take a look.

   Comment by CF — Sep 16th 2009 @ 1:18 pm

8. Dave) Maybe I was reading it wrong — what you describe is basically what I do: get a bill, go online and setup a payment to the business using my bank’s website for an amount that I manually enter and a date that I manually enter — I do this every month for each bill. The bank eventually wires (or cuts a check) to the business on my designated day. I am manually “pushing” the money to the businesses.

   The way I was reading the article (perhaps incorrectly) was that they were setting up payments to be made to the businesses (automatically) based on whatever amount the business tells the bank is due (via an online bill). Specifically in case a bill is lost or whatever, it will still be paid.

   Reading the other article that is linked on this one — it clarifies the matter: only the “fixed” bills are truly automated (paid even if you are dead), the variable amount bills are still manual (but paid via online bill pay): that’s exactly how I do it too.

   Comment by BG — Sep 16th 2009 @ 1:49 pm

9. My setup sounds similar to Dave’s.

   I use three main accounts for my automation – an online savings account, an online checking account that earns interest, and a checking account at a local bank.

   My paycheck is direct deposited to my savings account every two weeks. Twice a month, I have automatic transfers set up to the checking accounts (and various savings/brokerage accounts). The online checking account covers my “vital” bills – rent, car, student loans, insurance…all fixed amounts. I never touch this account, and all transfers into and out of it are handled automatically, so no more worrying if I have enough in my checking account to cover rent at the beginning of the month.

   The local checking account covers my variable bills and day-to-day money. I have easy access to it, and it’s connected to a local savings account for overdraft protection.

   The great part of the schedule is that twice a year, I have an extra paycheck left in my savings account that doesn’t get transferred into a checking account. Extra automatic savings!

   Like Dave said, it sounds a lot more complicated than it is

   Comment by CC — Sep 16th 2009 @ 2:09 pm

10. Sorry for the confusion!We have recurring payments with our bills. Variable bills like electricity are a cinch to update. We just sign in and adjust the amount.

    Comment by Laura — Sep 16th 2009 @ 5:12 pm

11. Depending on how advanced your bank’s online bill pay application is, you can set up recurring payments for varying amounts with rules. For example I have a cell phone bill with a data plan that usually varies by a dollar or two each month. So, I set up an automatic payment rule to pay the bill when it comes in for the full balance as long as the balance is not above $95. If the bill comes in above that amount the bank sends me a email saying that the bill was recieved, but the dollar amount was above my automatic payment limits so it did not send a payment. I can then log in to my bank, review the bill and determine if I want to pay it or if I have to contact my cell phone provider because of an error. This saves me so much time! It is like someone else is looking out for incorrect bills for you. Virtually of my payments are automated through my banks online bill pay system or through Paytrust (which is a good option for those of you who pay bills from different accounts at different banks).

    I would never set up automatic pulls from businesses, simply because it is too much to keep track of if anything goes wrong. When you do it through your bank everything is in one place and they usually have more indepth alerts that keep you up to date on what is going on with your bill pay account.

    Comment by Tiffany — Sep 17th 2009 @ 12:17 pm

12. One note….. by automating your bills your credit report will now reflect that you are a on-time payer.

    to @10 above – my utility bills are automatically paid from my account. the utility company sends me an email in advance, and automatically takes it out on a date certain. Thereby I’m not having to update anything. What a real time saver. I enter the amount in my software when the email arrives and I’m on my merry way.

    Good Posts!

    Comment by Patty — Sep 17th 2009 @ 11:24 pm

13. #11) that is interesting, I need to check my bank to see if they offer that — I think that does provide a good safety net to catch certain errors.

    #12) No way I could do that, and here are the reasons: if the company makes an error and “pulls” too much, you are gonna be in for a fight trying to get money back. Also, you should be watching your water bill closely: you could have a leaky toilet that is losing 21,000 gallons per month and not even know it. Most of my utility bills have graphs showing what my usage was compared to previous months and the same month last year. Also, as someone else mentioned, you may not be aware of rate changes — anytime a company raises rates on me, I immediately start looking for a replacement company.

    Comment by BG — Sep 18th 2009 @ 10:57 am

14. Great post, thanks for sharing your personal ways of saving and reducing debt, it will surely help many people.

    Comment by Samson Smith — Sep 28th 2009 @ 6:27 am

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