Online Banking and Automatic Bill Payments
Since my family and I bought and moved into our new home and acquired a completely new set of bills, we began using online banking and automatic bill payments to manage and keep up on our financial responsibilities.
Most banks nowadays provide online banking, which allows you to view recent activity, download and print activity statements, transfer funds between accounts, and pay bills electronically, all without having to visit the bank. At any time, day or night, we can check our current balance and decide whether we can afford that next major purchase.
Automatic bill payments can be set up in a number of ways. Your bank/credit union may provide a service in which you provide information about the company that you receive a monthly bill from, and the bank then receives your bill and pays the bill electronically from your account. Another method of automatic bill pay is from the company's side: you provide information about your banking account or credit card and they charge your account when your bill comes due. If possible, I recommend charging your credit card rather than your bank account for two reasons: 1) It's safer to share your credit card number online and over the phone because of fraud protection that is provided by most major credit card companies (see Visa and American Express's fraud protection policies). 2) Paying by credit card provides a 30 day cushion to pay your bill. For example, if the balance in your checking account is just below the amount that one or more companies are about to debit your account, you can avoid bounced checks and overdrawn transaction fees by managing your funds in your credit card account until you receive your next paycheck.
To me, there are two major benefits to signing up for automatic bill payments: 1) Not having to worry month to month if a particular bill has been paid on time, 2) Not having to spend money on checks and stamps to pay my bills, and the time it takes to write out and mail the payments. Even though I pay most of my bills automatically, for my utilities I still receive written billing statements in the mail just like I did before, although the statements say something like "Bank Payment" in the Amount Paid box, and don't include a return envelope. A couple of companies send me statements in my email, and one or two send my monthly statements via email and regular mail.
One last item: for these and any other online or automatic services that you use, put together list of companies with your usernames and passwords, phone numbers and other contact information and give your spouse a copy. In the event that you are unavailable to cancel a service or stop automatic payments, it's a good idea for them to have the information available to cancel or make adjustments to the provided services.
Conclusion: Online banking and automatic bill payments can take the worry out of managing your finances and paying your bills on time. Decide the best method for paying your bills: in my opinion, credit cards work best in most cases, and be sure to create and share a list of contact information for any online or automatic services that you use so that services can be adjusted or modified in the event that you are no longer able to make those decisions.
Most banks nowadays provide online banking, which allows you to view recent activity, download and print activity statements, transfer funds between accounts, and pay bills electronically, all without having to visit the bank. At any time, day or night, we can check our current balance and decide whether we can afford that next major purchase.
Automatic bill payments can be set up in a number of ways. Your bank/credit union may provide a service in which you provide information about the company that you receive a monthly bill from, and the bank then receives your bill and pays the bill electronically from your account. Another method of automatic bill pay is from the company's side: you provide information about your banking account or credit card and they charge your account when your bill comes due. If possible, I recommend charging your credit card rather than your bank account for two reasons: 1) It's safer to share your credit card number online and over the phone because of fraud protection that is provided by most major credit card companies (see Visa and American Express's fraud protection policies). 2) Paying by credit card provides a 30 day cushion to pay your bill. For example, if the balance in your checking account is just below the amount that one or more companies are about to debit your account, you can avoid bounced checks and overdrawn transaction fees by managing your funds in your credit card account until you receive your next paycheck.
To me, there are two major benefits to signing up for automatic bill payments: 1) Not having to worry month to month if a particular bill has been paid on time, 2) Not having to spend money on checks and stamps to pay my bills, and the time it takes to write out and mail the payments. Even though I pay most of my bills automatically, for my utilities I still receive written billing statements in the mail just like I did before, although the statements say something like "Bank Payment" in the Amount Paid box, and don't include a return envelope. A couple of companies send me statements in my email, and one or two send my monthly statements via email and regular mail.
One last item: for these and any other online or automatic services that you use, put together list of companies with your usernames and passwords, phone numbers and other contact information and give your spouse a copy. In the event that you are unavailable to cancel a service or stop automatic payments, it's a good idea for them to have the information available to cancel or make adjustments to the provided services.
Conclusion: Online banking and automatic bill payments can take the worry out of managing your finances and paying your bills on time. Decide the best method for paying your bills: in my opinion, credit cards work best in most cases, and be sure to create and share a list of contact information for any online or automatic services that you use so that services can be adjusted or modified in the event that you are no longer able to make those decisions.
posted by Kevin at
6/24/2005 04:50:00 AM
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