Question of the Day - Monday July 20th

[AbbysMom]

I took over my mother's finances a little over a month ago and the differences between the way the two of us handle things is quite different. I pay most of my bills online through my bank. I kept track of most of my bank accounts with Quicken. For the few checks that I do write out, I have duplicate checks, so it is easy to keep track of what each check is for.

My mother pays everything with checks, uses the handwritten checkbook register and does not have duplicate checks. I recently realized her account was off by $540 and it took me a fair amount of time to find. I just had to order whiteout to fix the check register.

How do you pay your bills?

 

[Elphaba09]

It depends. Some are automatic payments, some I do by phone or online, and some I pay by check. Our village utilities only accept checks or money orders unless you go inside to pay.

 

[Katie M]

I only have two regular bills. My internet bill is an automatic payment, and I pay my power bill over the phone. I wish I could pay my rent that way, but they only accept checks.

 

[Kieka]

Nearly all my bills are online payment. Since I get paid weekly, I make weekly payments on everything an amount that should cover the monthly bill. I check them once a month when the eBill comes in to make sure. I tend to carry credit on almost every account that is reoccurring which comes in handy when I have an emergency expense; I just skip a week or two of payments and use up my credit. One off expenses I usually pay off right away or set up weekly payments to ensure the balance is paid within the promotional period. If a company offers 0% financing I use it even if I can afford it in full. Helps my credit score and allows me to spread the cost out (which means I can also put more in savings where I will earn interest on the money).

You would probably think I have huge savings, but I don't. Six years of making less then my cost of living really hurt but my habits made it manageable during that period.

 

[Willowy]

Mortgage, propane, electric, water, and garbage pickup are paid by check in the mail. Credit cards are paid online.

I've always been very very good at balancing my checkbook so I've never been off, except by maybe a few cents due to transposing numbers or a small math error. When I was a kid my mom gave me her extra check registers and I'd use them to manage my cash, "balancing" it like a checking account. I thought it was fun! I was a weird kid. My brother is absolutely hopeless when it comes to keeping his account balanced so it wasn't anything my parents did.

 

[verna davies]

Most of mine are by direct debit but others I pay on my credit card, very few by cheque.

 

[denice]

I pay all of my bills online. I wrote a check this past February for my drivers license renewal, they only take check or cash, no plastic. On the years that I only renew my plates I can do that online with my checking account. It had been so long since I wrote a check I had to think about it and it felt so odd to write a check.

 

[susanm9006]

I pay everything but one online by bank bill pay once a month right after I get my social security check. It’s just easier not to miss anything that way and works out well with payment due dates. The one payment that is auto pay is my health insurance premium and the reason for it is their inability to promptly record a check payment. Bank bill pay give me control of what is deducted and when.

And while we are on the topic, my preach about online finances. I understand why some people don’t trust online BUT even if you choose to not do your banking online or use other online services, you need to set up online accounts with strong Individual passwords for every account you have anyway. It is just incredibly easy to set up an account for the first time - you just need a few pieces of information that are easy to obtain and no one will call you to verify that it was indeed you that registered online. And if a scammer gets to your online account before you HE opens your account and becomes you. They can divert paper statements to online, use their email address etc. so you don’t know anything is going on until they have taken your money and accessed other accounts you might have.

If you are managing a parent account set their online accounts up for then. I set up my moms and put an alert on it so that I am emailed every time a check is written so I can watch for fraud.

 

[DreamerRose]

I do it half and half, and it's beginning to get confusing. I charge everything I used to debit to a cash-back credit card, and then pay it in total every month. I have 5-6 bills I pay by check, and 6-8 more that are automatically debited to my bank account. All these different ways means it's hard to balance my checking account at the end of the month. I also budget, and having different expenses in different places makes that difficult, too.

But I really do like the automatic payments from my checking account. It means that much less to worry about.

 

[MoochNNoodles]

Everything is either online or automatic for us. DH uses Quicken to keep track of everything but we also have a budget sheet in Excel to double check we've paid everything.

 

[misty8723]

Most of them online these days, and I keep a register in Excel and reconcile it with the bank statement frequently. Some are automatically deducted. If I do pay by check, I don't have duplicates but I enter it into the spreadsheet so I keep it up to date. When I paid mostly by check and used the check register book, I could never keep it balanced and it was a mess.

 

[NY cat man]

We pay everything by check, but we make copies of the bill and check for our records, but every so often we shred the outdated ones.

 

[neely]

My mother pays everything with checks, uses the handwritten checkbook register and does not have duplicate checks.

I did that task awhile ago when my mom was alive. Actually she kept meticulous records so she would scrutinize every single bill and check I wrote. It drove me nuts.

I pay some bills on-line and some by check. One thing I learned early in our marriage was to not let DH handle the checkbook.

 

[MonaLyssa33]

I pay everything online. Most are on automatic withdrawal, but there are some that aren't like my car insurance since I pay that every 6 months and I need to know beforehand if I have enough money in my account to pay it all upfront.

 

[Mia6]

Online, one by phone, and my landlord comes by for the rent.

 

[Winchester]

We don't have many bills to pay anymore; our house is paid off as are our vehicles. And while we do think sometimes about buying a new car, we don't want that car payment, so we think about it and then say, "Nahhhhh". (Rick has been semi-thinking about trading in our truck and our Tuscon on a new truck. I still have Clarence for driving 'round town, not that I do much driving anymore. But again, those darn payments turn us off every time.)

Most of our bills are now online: credit cards paid in full, electricity, and phone. Most of the time Rick will pay the cable bill online, but sometimes he'll mail it out; sometimes we'll just drive it over and drop it in the box, if we need to run one of the cars. My Medicare drug plan is now set up to be paid automatically every month; Rick's drug plan is in with his Medicare supplemental. We pay our home and auto insurance at the beginning of every year for the year. And our trash bill is still paid by check every three months. That's all we have.

Rick is in charge of the finances. We both like it that way. That doesn't mean that I don't know what's going on in the house. I do.

 

[posiepurrs]

The first part of our marriage (25 years) I did all the bill paying, budget etc. This was before on line paying was available. I turned it over to Bill and he has set things up on line. Now he is ill I am taking it over. The way it is set up is confusing to me, but I know it is because I just started doing it. At the moment, I don't like it - I want to have record of what I have paid, how much and when written down. It gives me satisfaction and comfort to see it in writing. He never kept a register and always just rounded the amounts up. Thankfully, we don't have much to pay really since our house is paid for. The cars aren't but really we could get rid of one of them since he no longer drives.

 

[Jem]

Most of our bills are automatic withdrawal from my account but a few of them (hydro, water and credit card) I pay online. All the bills get paid thru my account and my husband will deposit a lump sum into my account monthly...we've never gotten around to having a joint account started so this works. When we first moved in together, he moved in with me, so all the bills were in my name, so when we bought our house it was just easier to transfer them and just add his name, but still have them linked with my bank account.
And besides, I'm better with money and organization than he is!!!
He does have his own credit card bill, which he pays online.

 

[Xraystyle]

my student loans are auto-paid, as is my cellphone bill. My rent is paid by my employer and insurance/pension/tax is automatically deducted from my paycheck. So the only bills I physically pay each month are my building management fees and utilities--and most of the utilities are included in the building management fee, except for the gas bill. Those two bills I typically pay by online bank transfer, or if I don't have my passcard handy, I can go to an ATM and do the bank transfer there. That's normally how stuff gets paid here, bank transfer. People aren't secretive about their account numbers because the security is on the back end (ie you need to download a million security programs before you can log in)

oh, one more bill is my monthly drum lesson fee. That I just pay by card in-person!

 

[aliceneko]

I still live with my family so I don't pay my own bills just yet, but I do pay for my Spotify and Amazon from the money I earn at work.