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How do you keep track of your bills?

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That's one of the other reasons I've avoided auto pay. I just don't trust most companies to charge me correctly. I've lost count how many times I've had to call Verizon to have them fix my fios bill
 
Paratus said:
Personally, we'd rather control when the money goes out of the account. If the autopay accepts credit cards then that's fine. I can contest it when they inevitably screw up the charge.
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That's how I do it. My credit union also allows me to set upper and lower limits on bills. For instance, I have an upper limit on my auto insurance and my electric bill, so I know if my insurance company raised my rate and it will not pay out, and I know when my electric bill is crazy so I can track down what new insanity my kids managed to pull. The last one was leaving the electric pool heater set at 85 degrees.
 
I only have 4 bills a month and all are on auto withdraw so not much to worry about as long as there is money in the account.

Rent(includes utilities)
Car insurance
Cell phone
Internet
 
I pay all bills via Direct Debit. UK equiv of autopay but has built in protections so should I need to contest a bill I can do a chargeback and cancel the DD from my banks end and then pay whatever is owed after it is all sorted out. Infact due to the Direct Debit guarantee the way utilities are set up now is that if they do have a billing error they just tell you to do the chargeback while they sort out things their end and they will issue you a new bill.

I also have a spreadsheet with the cost of all the bills/outgoings in to keep track of saving goals and see where we can trim the fat.
 
dabuddha said:
That's the other thing about my current setup. I have most of my paycheck going into my savings account and I then transfer whatever I need for bills into my checking account. Really has helped me out with saving up my money
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Weird. I thought there was an annual limit of half a dozen transfers from savings to checking. I see it's half a dozen per month (Regulation D). Hmmm; may have to switch back to this. I like having the money in savings rather than checking, with it NOT set up to pull from my savings if I overdraft. I hate having a lot in checking, and having to worry, "what if someone manages to get into my account."

My system for paying all my bills: my wife sits down every Saturday morning and pays the bills that are due the following week. A lot of them (from companies that don't have reputations of screwing things up) are automatic. I've glanced at what she's doing from time to time, looks like an Excel spreadsheet. I'm doomed if she dies before me. 😛
 
dabuddha said:
That's one of the other reasons I've avoided auto pay. I just don't trust most companies to charge me correctly. I've lost count how many times I've had to call Verizon to have them fix my fios bill
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Do they fix it on the spot and your balance due is then lowered or do they fix it and credit you in the next billing cycle? I'll bet it's the latter because I have never seen it happen the other way. The point I'm making is that you should really be honest with yourself in determining why you're opposed to autopay. What you are doing in the thread is asking for advice and then declaring the reasons why you can't take advantage of the suggestions given. The end result will be a continuation of the status quo for you. If you're happy with that outcome I guess it's all good.
 
boomerang said:
Do they fix it on the spot and your balance due is then lowered or do they fix it and credit you in the next billing cycle? I'll bet it's the latter because I have never seen it happen the other way. The point I'm making is that you should really be honest with yourself in determining why you're opposed to autopay. What you are doing in the thread is asking for advice and then declaring the reasons why you can't take advantage of the suggestions given. The end result will be a continuation of the status quo for you. If you're happy with that outcome I guess it's all good.
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It's almost always the latter (You'll see the correct in the next billing cycle nonsense). I like the idea of autopay to a degree but I wish they could "enhance" it. I liked what one of the previous posters said his credit union does in which he can specify an upper limit on bills that are on autopay. Now that would work so I can set a max limit on what gets taken out.

But I really don't mind the manual work of paying the bills (setting up the payments via billpay). I just need a system that can send me reminders when certain bills should be due so that if I don't get the bill via mail, I'll know to login to the companies site to get my bill.
 
DrPizza said:
Weird. I thought there was an annual limit of half a dozen transfers from savings to checking. I see it's half a dozen per month (Regulation D). Hmmm; may have to switch back to this. I like having the money in savings rather than checking, with it NOT set up to pull from my savings if I overdraft. I hate having a lot in checking, and having to worry, "what if someone manages to get into my account."
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I brought this up in a thread I created and got lambasted by the usual suspects. We've purchased a second residence and the autopays associated with it have now made it impossible to have everything debited from my savings account without exceeding the federal limits. I must now have some debited from my checking account. The transfer from my savings to checking counts against the six debit limit so it was a bit of a juggling act to try and do it the way I desire. I "solved" it by keeping a higher balance in the checking account and setting up autopays from it. But I didn't want to keep a large balance in the checking account.

Just to be clear for anyone interested, there is a six debit limit from a savings or money market account per month. An automatic debit or a transfer to another account counts against that limit. Those limitations are not in place with a checking account. If you operate solely out of a checking account the sky's the limit. Regulation D seems petty and outmoded to me.
 
I use a simple spreadsheet with 12 month columns and run the bills down rows in order of due date. Paid bills get colored in.
There is a summary of the bill total next to the monthly salary to remind me how bad I suck at saving.

Also have all the url's, usernames and password hints for the wife to use if I become unable to do it.
 
Don't know if it's been said here yet, but mint.com is a great tool for tracking any expenses you have. It also keeps a budget for you, helps you have savings goals and apparently gives you a free credit check, but I opted out of that.
 
dabuddha said:
It's almost always the latter (You'll see the correct in the next billing cycle nonsense). I like the idea of autopay to a degree but I wish they could "enhance" it. I liked what one of the previous posters said his credit union does in which he can specify an upper limit on bills that are on autopay. Now that would work so I can set a max limit on what gets taken out.

But I really don't mind the manual work of paying the bills (setting up the payments via billpay). I just need a system that can send me reminders when certain bills should be due so that if I don't get the bill via mail, I'll know to login to the companies site to get my bill.
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I hear ya but my two CC companies, my utilities including electric, gas, Comcast and Dish, car lease and various insurance policies (I do pay yearly though) all send me an email telling me my bill is available for viewing. The only thing I have to pay manually as I said before is for garbage pickup. We purchased a second residence and all the bills associated with it also send me an email. Even the podunk water company sends me an email with the bill as an attachment and debits my checking account automatically.

Do you get a utility bill for $118 and decide you only want to pay $85 and carry the balance to next month or what? Do they allow that? Or, do you want a limit because you're concerned they'll mistakenly debit $218 on a $118 bill? If that's the case I can tell you that in my case I have never had that happen in decades of autopay. I have never had an account compromised in any way.

So all but one of the entities that bill me regularly send me an email notification that my bill is available. The only one that doesn't is a small local garbage pickup company. Seems like you should have the same opportunities available to you. I'm repeating myself when I say that there is no way no how I am going to rely on the Post Office to get anything to me or deliver anything I may send. It's a crap shoot. It's a form of gambling. The answer is email.
 
I have all bill due dates on my calendar at home as well as the calendar on my phone. Since my new job is monthly pay, I pay everything when the paycheck is deposited into my account. I don't do anything automatically.
 
boomerang said:
I hear ya but my two CC companies, my utilities including electric, gas, Comcast and Dish, car lease and various insurance policies (I do pay yearly though) all send me an email telling me my bill is available for viewing. The only thing I have to pay manually as I said before is for garbage pickup. We purchased a second residence and all the bills associated with it also send me an email. Even the podunk water company sends me an email with the bill as an attachment and debits my checking account automatically.

Do you get a utility bill for $118 and decide you only want to pay $85 and carry the balance to next month or what? Do they allow that? Or, do you want a limit because you're concerned they'll mistakenly debit $218 on a $118 bill? If that's the case I can tell you that in my case I have never had that happen in decades of autopay. I have never had an account compromised in any way.

So all but one of the entities that bill me regularly send me an email notification that my bill is available. The only one that doesn't is a small local garbage pickup company. Seems like you should have the same opportunities available to you. I'm repeating myself when I say that there is no way no how I am going to rely on the Post Office to get anything to me or deliver anything I may send. It's a crap shoot. It's a form of gambling. The answer is email.
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It's always been an issue of they sent me a bill with mistakes in it (overcharging for stuff). Very common with my experience with Verizon.

The utilities, I wouldn't mind auto paying (even with my bank) since I don't think I've ever gotten a bad bill.

Credit Card companies I sometimes have to call to figure out some charges or I might have a few things that are credited back to the card but don't appear till the next cycle since the credit went in after the billing cycle cycled over.

Maybe I'll have to rethink how my paycheck is deposited (currently goes into my savings account and I pull what I need). Or maybe I just need to setup a system where I get emails 5 days before a bill's due date. Some sort of email system might work great for me.
 
dabuddha said:
That's one of the other reasons I've avoided auto pay. I just don't trust most companies to charge me correctly. I've lost count how many times I've had to call Verizon to have them fix my fios bill
Click to expand...

I don't trust auto pay either having seen numerous billing mistakes plus it wouldn't work well for the bills we can pay with a CC since we rotate through so many. We have a shared google calendar with all the various bill due dates on it that shows us reminders when something is within 1 week of needing to be mailed out\paid.
 
I'm just amazed by how much work people are apparently willing to put in every month in paying routine bills.

If Verizon does screw up your bill, do you think you're powerless to contest it if it's autopayed? What kind of banks do you people do business with? Or maybe you live hand to mouth, so that an extra $50 charge is going to put you in the red? If so, you have bigger problems than just keeping track of your bills.
 
Carson Dyle said:
I'm just amazed by how much work people are apparently willing to put in every month in paying routine bills.

If Verizon does screw up your bill, do you think you're powerless to contest it if it's autopayed? What kind of banks do you people do business with? Or maybe you live hand to mouth, so that an extra $50 charge is going to put you in the red? If so, you have bigger problems than just keeping track of your bills.
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This is pretty much how I handle things. I realize it's theoretically better for you to never allow one cent more than necessary to leave your account, but I'm not about to put in the effort required to do that. The few times I've had a billing problem I either caught it before the debit went through or just got a credit on the next month's bill for the amount of the error. I just keep enough in the checking account to cover everything. No need to live every minute of my life on the ragged edge of being overdrawn just so I'm not temporarily out a little money once or twice a decade.
 
lxskllr said:
In my head. I don't coexist well with rigid organization. It ends up being more work, for little benefit.
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This is how I did it before, but now I have just about everything on auto debit, and fiancee filters the mail and says "this is the important shit you need to look at."
 
We have a unified payment service that all banks in Denmark supports, and so does all companies, so once you've added your bill to the service you don't need to worry.
 
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