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Bills-How long does it take you? PP 12.10

AnneofAlamo

AnneofAlamo

Slippers IN sunshine? Even better!
Joined
Aug 30, 2009
Messages
19,711
We are debt free!!:woot Glory and that helps so much.
I remember the days past of juggling and paying one and transfering and oh the horror.:groan
I got up this morning at 5:45am, and made coffee, :compcoffeeread the Pad, Fox news online, and checked my email.
Then to banking.
At 6:05, I'm done with bills, and ready to take on the day! :wooot
 
I get almost all of my bills via email these days and I pay them as soon as I get them so I don't forget! Thankfully we haven't had to do any robbing Peter to pay Paul for our bills. Some of our bills are even automatically paid, like our cell phone bill and the internet/cable bill. I probably should see if I could auto pay our electric and natural gas bill too. The credit card bill has to be reviewed before being paid though, just so I can make sure I haven't been hacked anywhere along the way. :)
 
oooooooooooh I am a freak on auto payments...lol, our phones are dumb ones/pre paid and they are on auto refill only. But I love to sit on payday, and do our bills. They online, my bank sends the "check". I also write out checks for church, and our city's water, cause they are incompetent and jack up the online one every time. lol
 
I pay all my bills online too... even church now! (although I totally feel like a heel when they pass the plate at church and I never put anything in since they automatically withdraw from my bank account) :giggle

The only check I still have to write is for my kids' lunch account. Grr... get with the times people! Lol! :)
 
lorryfach said:
Zero time, I guess, since it's all automated.
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gosh? but don't you still have a budget and such? keeping a record? or am I still old school? I have quicken on my puter, that I keep a tally of purchases and savings?
 
I also pay everything online. I don't like to set up auto payments though because I just like to have a look see to make sure everything is as it should be. As soon as I get an email notice that a statement is ready I check it out and pay. We are aslo finally debt free with the mortgage finished last year. Its so nice to have no anxiety as bills come in....
 
We are also debt free (other than our house). Just in time for college for DS #1 :giggle (counting on scholarships)

Most of our bills are auto paid as well, but I still have to remember ALL of the school stuff except tuition (lunch, clubs, endless extra costs).

DH does the balancing/budgeting and he is not very fastidious. It's something I've just released and pray our credit stays OK, LOL.
It's interesting that the only thing he "lets" me handle is the above mentioned never-ending school fees. Hmmm...

Karen said:
I pay all my bills online too... even church now! (although I totally feel like a heel when they pass the plate at church and I never put anything in since they automatically withdraw from my bank account) :giggle
Click to expand...

As a pastor's wife... let that basket pass... we love automated tithing ;)
 
We are completely debt free! We paid off our mortgage this year. I pay online...really quick, but like Lindzee, no auto payments. Love it!
 
I can log into the bank to see a record of what we spent. It all goes into and out of one place so I guess Quicken seems redundant to me. I have used it before when I had credit cards, cash, checks, etc. But with one account I don't see the point.
 
CPA here. I "pay bills" every Sunday. That amounts to putting in all of my receipts into Quicken, then letting the bank/credit cards upload, match up all the transactions. Then I look at anything I didn't do myself (i.e. the trip to Arby's, Subway or the grocery store that my son did) and make sure it's valid. The only checks I write anymore are to the hairdresser. Everything else I handle online on Sundays. I'm still too much an accountant to not know the categories of my spending. Too often I need to be able to find something specific I spent on college or business stuff and Quicken fits the bill for me.
 
I don't do the bills, so ZERO time for me. LOL

I do give my receipts to hubby immediately. He's a stickler for making sure everything is put in his budgeting software.

All our bills are automatically deducted except for our water bill. Like Stacia, Jay confirms that all receipts match from my purchases and his, and confirms that all the automatic payments have processed.

He has charts and graphs that he looks at regarding our gas consumption, food bill (groceries, household goods, eating out), clothing, hairstylist, etc.

I think our records go back to 1997 in his program? LOL
 
This is one of those things that drives me crazy. My husband works at a bank. He's a credit officer for goodness' sake, but he is horrible with paying the bills. We didn't have a joint account for a long time, and I still don't pay all of the bills. The mortgage and utility bills are his task, but there are times I'd really like to take it away from him because he doesn't pay them. I pay bills as soon as I get them, or like for the beach house mortgage, I always pay it on the 25th (early). I don't budget or spend time going over my bank statements. I have the general idea and look close enough to make sure weird charges aren't there, but that is about it. We have some bills set up as auto pay, but he piddles around with the rest and it drives me crazy. Our main mortgage is ridiculous because the only way to pay online is to incur a $15 service fee... which he does every month because he's usually paying it at the last minute. Grrrr.

Right before we got married, he'd refinanced the house and had new windows installed. The bank gave him a $10,000 check from a line of credit they started for him. He never cashed the check. He actually lost/recycled it. AND HE WAS PAYING THE BILL EVERY MONTH even though he never cashed the check. I bugged him about it for YEARS. I couldn't do anything because my name wasn't on the mortgage, so they wouldn't talk to me. The mortgage company bugged him about it at one point,but he never followed through with them. Then they sold our mortgage to another company, and then that company resold it, so finally someone caught on to the fact that he'd never cashed that check. He'd paid about $6000 of it (including paying interest... on money he never had), so he got a refund finally... but STILL!!! How can you work in finance every day and not do something so simple? I love to tease him about that. It is just insane.
 
eep, I do charts and graphs...drives my family crazy!!
we did a no spend October...and put $1500 in the bank! They became believers of my charts..bhahahha
 
I do the bills. It's so scheduled that it doesn't take much time. Maybe 20-30 minutes a week. Then there's the kids extras...and usually it's checks. I hate checks. I love electronic payments! LOL! I have gotten to the point where I get a money order for the boys , because it takes them over 2 months to cash a check. Drives me bonkers.
 
I get paid once a month, on the last day of the month, so I sit down a couple of days before and schedule everything for the first. Then I don't have to worry about anything the rest of the month. It takes me 20-30 minutes tops. I do deliver my water bill because they wanted to charge me an extra $1 to pay online and it really rubbed me the wrong way lol
 
What is it with the water bills?! Lol! For a long time I couldn't pay ours online either with my bank and then they FINALLY got on board with the times and I can now.

Kimberlee. Oh. My. Goodness. I would lose my mind if my hubby lost a $10,000 check and paid on it anyway. Holy cow! :giggle
 
I refuse to give auto payment info to anyone. I would rather spend the 20 - 30 min it takes to schedule them through the bank or reenter my card number on the site as a one time payment. I had a bad experience with a company taking let's call it liberties on the bill and payment when I gave them direct access. And another company decided to take their bill twice. Grrr.
We write a check to pay rent. Because otherwise there's a $10 +2.5% fee. Basically, if the company charges me to pay the bill, I have my credit union bill pay it. :)
 
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