#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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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?