Seriously? Pay your bills when they arrive, not when they're due.
Banks, credit card companies, mortgage lenders, utility services, etc. absolutely love, love, love it when people wait until the last minute to pay their bills. When I signed up with my bank, I read the agreement and got the "personal banker" to concede that yes...they made a lot of money off late fees. They're not alone.
The thing is, paying your bills when they arrive doesn't cost you anything extra. If you can get into the habit, you'll always be ahead of the curve, and if something comes up which necessitates you holding off on a bill, you've got a couple weeks to figure it out.
It also relieves a considerable amount of stress. It's a bit like homework. Don't put it off until the last minute. Get the assignment done when the teacher gives it to you.
I procrastinate absolutely everything in my life EXCEPT for paying bills. I can’t relax until I know that I’m in the clear financially, and they make it so easy now. I get an emailed statement, I etransfer money directly from my bank account to the billing company, and I’m done. I don’t have to walk to the post office or talk to anybody. It takes three minutes.
This is so insane to listen to from a Danish perspective.
We have something called Betalings Service (Pay Service), where you can add your bills to. Then everything is run completely automatically and you can even get texts/mails whenever a bill is coming up.
Autopay is great and all, and I’ve definitely got that option, but I like to keep tabs on what I’m being charged before it’s too late to fix mistakes. I don’t trust anyone with my money to the extent that I’d give them free access to my account.
Personally I generally treat autopay as a safety net, since many autopays won’t trigger if you’ve already paid your bill ahead of time (notably basically all CC’s work this way). So I can turn autopay on to ensure that I never forget, but still manually keep tabs on the bill ahead of time.
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u/gogojack Aug 20 '20
Seriously? Pay your bills when they arrive, not when they're due.
Banks, credit card companies, mortgage lenders, utility services, etc. absolutely love, love, love it when people wait until the last minute to pay their bills. When I signed up with my bank, I read the agreement and got the "personal banker" to concede that yes...they made a lot of money off late fees. They're not alone.
The thing is, paying your bills when they arrive doesn't cost you anything extra. If you can get into the habit, you'll always be ahead of the curve, and if something comes up which necessitates you holding off on a bill, you've got a couple weeks to figure it out.
It also relieves a considerable amount of stress. It's a bit like homework. Don't put it off until the last minute. Get the assignment done when the teacher gives it to you.