Do you autopay your bills?

[athena53]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Onward I don't auto-pay prop taxes or anything else (except where it's absolutely required). I trust myself more than I trust auto-pay, and I like being able to control exactly when payments get made. I would especially avoid auto-paying directly from a bank account. Your money is missing while any "mistakes" get ironed out.

Same here- I'm a control freak. I do auto-pay the mortgage because I don't want to mess that one up- but *I* set up the payment for the first of every month- in other words, I push it to them, they don't pull it from me. My Planet Fitness membership, unfortunately, requires them to be able to pull it from my checking account. I don't like it, but I like Planet Fitness. Last year's health insurer also required this; current year's insurer allowed credit cards and I allowed that auto-pay, too. Don't want to get that wrong and I was happy to get 2% back from Fidelity.

[W2R]

Quote:

Originally Posted by OldShooter Which makes me realize that a definition of "auto pay" might be worth discussing. I think @W2R is referring to ACH transfers, which are originated by the payee for "whatever they feel they are owed." I dislike and avoid ACH because it is completely out of my control. ("Automated Clearing House") My autopays from Schwab involve the payee electronically sending a bill to Schwab, my getting an email notice of the bill amount, and Schwab automatically paying the bill unless I intervene during the grace period. I have two bills where the vendor can't submit electronically: our lake home telehone/internet and our home ISP/internet. The ISP bill is the same every month so I just have Schwab send them a fixed monthly check. The lake bill varies by a few pennies but I send a fixed monthly amount and adjust any cumulative variations by tweeking the payment a few cents once or twice a year. Only my county taxes go by ACH, since I have no option.

Right.

You know, it's hard to put a dollar value on the convenience of auto-pay for someone like me. Not only did my credit score skyrocket, and not only do I never get phone calls from creditors, or have my electricity shut off on a Saturday night, or some other calamity... but also it's just one less chore nagging me in the back of my mind at all times.

As I mentioned I have not had one auto-pay that differed from the exact amount I owed, to the penny, in the past 17 years, and that is doing about a half dozen to a dozen or so each month. At this point, even if one was off by a huge amount I would consider auto-pay to be worth it for the convenience I have already enjoyed. No fees, and no middleman either.

YMMV and I know some very rational, nice people who genuinely love paying bills in other ways, sometimes even by hand. Individual preference is the best way to do this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maenad We have as much on autopay as we can, including property taxes. I know some folks worry about incorrect charges, but I've never had a problem and we watch our bills religiously.

+1000

[kaneohe]

Seems to be 2 choices here:
1) Be paranoid of something bad happening and do all the work yourself;
2) Be trusting at the risk of something messing up.

I don't like the work of paying each bill manually each month nor the risk of forgetting to pay some so I've had autopay for decades.....to credit card if possible for the rewards, and if not possible, to checking acct.

In all those yrs, I've had two booboos but still favor the convenience of autopay. In one case, I had electronic link to checking so mutual fund could deposit monthly dividends there. Fund decided that I had signed up for autoinvest for some reason and depleted checking acct, causing a bunch of checks to bounce w/ the resultant $25 or so fees/check. Fortunately credit union was understanding enough to waive fees and mutual fund admitted their error. I guess that wasn't really an "autopay" error but be aware that mistakes can happen even if payment is going the other way (to you).

The second incident may have a valuable lesson for some. The Rx drug plan was signed up for autopay. One day a withdrawal 10x normal occurred. The
drug company was not cooperative but a side benefit was I discovered a way to deal w/ them. The credit union said they could pull the payment back if I signed some papers and it worked.

[audreyh1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gayl I auto pay almost all my bills. Plus I auto transfer into my savings account, the kid's charge card account, and my vacation account. But I just noticed that the county lets us setup to auto pay our property tax. I'm thinking about doing it. Do any of you auto pay your property taxes?

No, I'm not going to autopay property taxes since it's a large amount and I need to transfer funds to cover it. But I do plan to pay online.

I do autopay most bills, by credit cards where I can, by ebill where I can, and a few are direct debit - mostly insurance. The few exceptions to autopay are a couple of cards that I sometimes run up large balances on, and I need to make sure extra funds are in place before scheduling the payment.

Even my estimated taxes were on autopay this year! I just set up the quarterly draft at eftps.gov.

[VanWinkle]

I autopay everything except property taxes. I try to make them wait til the last minute.

[pb4uski]

About 5-6 years ago DD convinced me to go to autopay for as much as possible. On New Year's Day, I sat down and moved as much to autopay as possible.

Where possible, I used my 2% rebate credit card, otherwise a direct debit of our checking account. Where I can't do those or there is a charge for using autopay then I order electronic checks from our bank.

Both of our property taxes are only once a year and charge fees to use autopay, so for those I order a check when I get the property tax bill.

I also move a lot of my mother's bill to autopay.

Between all of them, I have yet to have a problem or issue with a mispaid bill.

[jazz4cash]

I try to only use the push method using BOA checking. I do permit Planet Fitness ($10/mo) and my mortgage lender to pull payments. I don't think the county is setup for autopay so I manually authorize them to pull payments as required. I may try pushing a payment to them to see what happens. I've had good luck using billpay to transfer funds to other institutions instead of using the transfer process.

[GrayHare]

With autopay and uncertainty about how much will be pulled, how do you make sure to have enough in the account?

[pb4uski]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GrayHare With autopay and uncertainty about how much will be pulled, how do you make sure to have enough in the account?

I have all my regular bills and deposits defined in Quicken... I update them weekly or so...my home page in Quicken shows the projected balance in my bill payment checking account for the next 90 days. Since I get 2% on the first $10k in my checking account I try to keep about that in it.

[sengsational]

From best to worst:

• Give my credit card number directly to the vendor (no extra fee)
• Pay using my bank's "check-free" type solution
• Give my account & routing number directly to the vendor

I don't let anybody do the last thing. So nobody pulls directly from my checking account. In other words, I don't give out my bank's routing number & my account number. No "pulls" for me, because if they take your money, you're just out of luck. And if they get hacked, then the hackers have what they need to pull money out. It probably will get straightened-out eventually, but in the mean time, you're out that cash.


The best auto pay is when you put your credit card (not debit card) into the vendor's site. My health insurance, internet, etc are like that. Not only do I get the protections of any credit card transaction, but I also get 2% back.

But the majority of my auto pay is with the bank's "check free" type solution. It's quick and easy and under my control. Most bills are "electronic", but I can set anybody up in the system and they will mail a paper check to them. It gets deducted from my account right away, so I don't get the "float" I'd get if I wrote the check myself, but interest is about zero on the account anyway. And if there's ever an issue with the vendor where they say they've not been paid, it's trivial to open a ticket on the transaction and someone else argues with the vendor...I just flag the bad transaction and go have a beer.

[aja8888]

Chase Bill Pay for most (initiated by me), property tax paid by check.

[Meadbh]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GrayHare With autopay and uncertainty about how much will be pulled, how do you make sure to have enough in the account?

The biggest payment that is automatically deducted is just over $300 per month. I anticipate that and plan for it. I also check my accounts almost daily.

[audreyh1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pb4uski I have all my regular bills and deposits defined in Quicken... I update them weekly or so...my home page in Quicken shows the projected balance in my bill payment checking account for the next 90 days.

Same here. My Quicken version shows the next 30 days of scheduled bills which I update whenever I get a new bill. I leave enough in my various checking accounts to cover most of them as they are usually small to a few hundred dollars. I schedule transfers monthly from high yield savings, modifying the amount as needed. I do have to be more careful with the larger credit card balances >$1000 that happen due to travel or large purchases. I have to make sure enough funds are transferred ahead of time.

[akck]

I autopay everything except electricity and garbage. The main reason is my credit union waves bill pay fees if you make at least one payment through them each month. I like the option of using them for non-regular bills a couple times a year. I pay credit cards manually via ACH each month.

[Katsmeow]

Are we including subscriptions in this? I have a number of things paid periodically by credit card such as Netflix or annual Amazon Prime. For most of these there is no other option.

For other things I do a few auto pay: YMCA (well maybe that is more like Netflix actually), mortgage (did it because I didn't want to mess it up and is the same amount each month, health insurance (required to be paid from my bank account, and cell phone (get a discount for auto pay from checking account).

That's it. Everything else I pay directly. I pay everything I can with credit card to get the cash back. I log into YNAB on a daily basis and have my recurring transactions mostly scheduled so I know when things are going to come up. But, really maybe it would save more time to just set up auto pay on most things. There could be a mistake but I would think I would see it well in advance of due date as I log into credit card accounts frequently. So, maybe it would save time to do auto pay.

I've never heard of doing auto pay for property taxes. Don't even know if that is an option here. But, that is something I probably want to schedule on my own for when I want to do it.

[kcowan]

Everything on autopay to CC. Pay the CCs manually each month. Only a couple of early payments directly from bank account (before CCs allowed).

Property taxes were only enabled on autopay to CC a couple of years ago. Before that it was checks.

[audreyh1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Katsmeow Are we including subscriptions in this? I have a number of things paid periodically by credit card such as Netflix or annual Amazon Prime. For most of these there is no other option.

Of course. Netflix isn’t really different from a monthly cable bill in that respect.

I load up my iTunes account with discounted iTunes gift cards (sometimes you can find 20% off), and pay for Netflix that way.

[Car-Guy]

I pay as much on line with CC that I can then pay that off each month and get 1.5% cash back. (except NetFlix which is on auto pay.) Although I am considering going to auto pay on all monthly utilities.

[scrabbler1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GrayHare With autopay and uncertainty about how much will be pulled, how do you make sure to have enough in the account?

I don't use autopay for any of my large, irregular bills, the ones whose amounts vary the most from month to month or are paid less often than monthly. The monthly ones are mainly the smaller ones, less than $150 each (cable TV is really that + phone + internet combined). The only large bill is the monthly co-op maintenance bill.

My car insurance and credit card bills (which sometimes include car insurance) I don't auto pay because I want to choose the time of the month to pay them and they often vary depending on the timing of cash inflows.

A few months ago, my dad was suddenly and unexpectedly laid up due to an injury which had him in the hospital and rehab facility for about 3 weeks. I had to scramble to make sure all of his bills got paid. I set up autopay for some of them such as the monthly ones I have set up for myself, so if he, who lives alone, has something like this happen to him again, it won't be such a mad scramble.

[ShokWaveRider]

I do a "Push" auto-pay where possible. I do not allow a company to "Pull" from my bank accounts. There are 2 exceptions that I authorize them to pull from a credit card, but never from a bank account. Credit card payments are easier to stop if need be IMHO and from experience.