Comments on: Pay All Your Bills at the Same Time: Change Your Payment Due Dates

By: stngy1

stngy1 — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I know I’m repeating this, but:
Automated, once monthly billpaying has become our strategy. Although initially i used the biweekly paydays to pay everything, it dawned on me it’d be easier to go to once a month allowing me to really exploit the extra two pay periods a year. First, we paid a month ahead on all variable bills (except credit cards) so we would never go into the red should their due date not jive with our bill payment day. For ALL variable bills we pay a preset amount each month, based on historical use, (extra snowflaking is handled differently), so essentially all our bills are fixed, making life very simple.
Biweekly paychecks have a set amount (half the month’s bills) automatically transferred to the ING Savings account. If there’s extra money, its allocated to specialized ING subaccounts (e.g., “MEDICAL”) Once a month the neccessary monthly amount is moved to ING eChecking and through PayTrust all bills are paid. Random, once in a while bills are prescheduled through PayTrust (even those accepting only checks) to be paid on the same day and the neccessary amount to cover that bill is scheduled to be transferred on “Bill Day” from its ING Savings subaccount.
I cannot tell you how many headaches and missed payments this has saved us!
I get emails announcing when a bill has been received, when something is scheduled, what is upcoming the next week, and when the bills have been paid. I check ING and usually within 24 hours all payments have posted.
BTW, I hate paying by check since some folks love to hold on to them for one or two weeks before depositing. THAT is annoying. if someone is notorious for doing this, I have a special checking account I have their checks issued from. That way I won’t accidentally overdraft, thinking a check has already posted.
It’s all a lot less complicated than it sounds.

By: Laura

Laura — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I’ll try to do that this weekend. Thanks PT!

By: PT

PT — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

@SGM – As long as the company runs on multiple billing cycles they should be able to. Some local utilities may be too small to need multiple cycles though.

By: SingleGuyMoney

SingleGuyMoney — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve never thought of this either. I didn’t even know you could change the due date of utility bills.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Nice idea! I never thought of that!

By: Pinyo @ Moolanomy

Pinyo @ Moolanomy — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I automate most of my payments, so the due dates are the problem. However, this gave me a nice idea of moving some due dates to after my direct deposit dates — this could save me some money on margin interest since I do occasionally go into the red.

By: Jesse

Jesse — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I can honest say that when I did that (to the best extent possible…some payments were simply incompatible, not to mention I split my car payment up to save interest) it completely eliminated all budgeting “questions.”