Hands Off=Worry Free?

[COZICAN]

I have a couple of otherwise unused credit cards that are used for CC bill autopay. They don’t leave the house, nor are used for online purchases. I’ve had good luck with a long time and no compromises on them - knock on wood!

I have a Chase card that stays locked in a fire box inside the gun safe. It has three charges a month on it: Life Church, Compassion Intl and St. Jude. It's been compromised twice in 2 years. My Citi Card we use daily got compromised by a waitress in a bar. I could have made a big issue but Citi took care of it. I don't let my card out of my sight any longer.

Coz

 

[aja8888]

I am not as automated as most here!

What's on auto pay to CC or convenience checking:

Auto/house insurances
Medical insurance (Medigap & Part D)
Netflix

Paid by Bank Bill Pay (manually) when -e-bill is received:

Power
Gas
Water
Cable
Amazon CC
Main CC - PenFed
DW's private CC rolleyes

Checks written manually:

Housekeeper - twice monthly
Taxes - Property - Annual
Fed Tax (if required) - Annual

We rarely use cash....Oh, I mean me. DW always has cash in her purse.

 

[W2R]

I have had everything possible on autopay (by automatic deduction from my checking account) for the past 19 years.

Every month I check to make sure that each amount taken is exactly correct, and all have been correct to the penny, so far.

So I guess, in one sense, it's not hands off - - I do check everything every month. But in another sense it is, because I don't have to write checks, buy stamps, and, most of all, I don't have to remember to pay bills (the hard part! for me anyway). The system remembers for me.

Besides, I check my bank account every day for fraud prevention reasons and for budgeting reasons, so a second or two of my time taken to doublecheck these deductions while I am already looking at my bank account online, is negligible. I enter everything into Excel, make sure the numbers match, and that's that. All in all I'd say that all of this probably takes less than a minute and often, not even that long if no transactions have occurred either adding to or subtracting from my checking account balance.

I guess it is worry free in that I don't worry about bill payment at all. I do maintain a very definite level of awareness of how much I am paying for what.

I've got to say that overall I am a lot happier with my life, and home, than is MMM if this paragraph from his article is any indication:

All this incredible luxury occurs within my small house on the train tracks, tucked into a less-than-gentrified neighborhood at the corner of a less-than-world-class city. When I sit at that kitchen table, I gaze out at a shitty pergola structure that really needs the first available appointment with my fire pit, which covers a sadly undersized side patio, which is currently the only outdoor living space on my postage stamp sized lot.

. Unlike MMM, I love my home so much and love the view of my back yard, which I have attached below and which is right before my eyes as I post. If this is not Heaven on earth, I don't know what is.

 

[aja8888]

W2R, that's my kind of yard...grass only! Cut and go, no messing with plants and trees!

 

[W2R]

W2R, that's my kind of yard...grass only! Cut and go, no messing with plants and trees!

Thank you!!! When I moved in, it was an absolute jungle but I had trees and bushes and everything removed, the lot re-graded, new sidewalks and concrete, new topsoil brought in, and grass sodded. I love it and even better, I haven't spent 10 seconds working on it since early 2016 when all the work was completed. I hired a lawn guy to mow.

To me, my yard renovation gave me a really high value for my dollar.

Here's what (more or less) the same view of my back yard looked like before I bought the house:

 

[audreyh1]

I have a Chase card that stays locked in a fire box inside the gun safe. It has three charges a month on it: Life Church, Compassion Intl and St. Jude. It's been compromised twice in 2 years. My Citi Card we use daily got compromised by a waitress in a bar. I could have made a big issue but Citi took care of it. I don't let my card out of my sight any longer.

Coz

I guess I have been lucky. I suppose it's possible for a compromise to be an inside job at the issuing bank. Or it could be compromised by one of the very few vendors that I autopay accounts with. It's been a very long time, and I haven't had a compromise since using one of my "quarantined" cards for autopay bills.

 

[rk911]

99% auto-pay (would be 100% but one or two don’t offer it) and while i “track” them (meaning i read the email payment advice and transfer the amount of the bill to Quicken) but i don’t worry or fret about them.

i couldn’t tell you what the electric or gas rates are or how much water we used last month. we don’t run around the house turning off lights..just the opposite actually. we have a lot of mood or accent lighting on in most rooms. we heat and cool the house to please us. when ComEd forced a switch to a so-called “Smart Meter” they offered to take control during peak energy times. we declined the “offer”. they then sent us monthly “shame-on-you” notices that compared our energy usage to our neighbors. i canceled those notices. i didn’t care how much energy the neighbors were or were not using. our circle of friends received the same notices. funny but i have yet to meet someone who is using less energy than their neighbors. i instructed ComEd to not send those notices to us.

we’re very fortunate to be able to pretty much do as we please but we also are very, very low maintenance people. we’d rather spend a quiet night at home than go out. there’s the occasional “night” out...a later matinee followed by take-home dinner or dinner at Olive Garden. point is we live way, way beneath our means and have no real reason to closely monitor our spending.

 

[albireo13]

I have all fixed bills and utilities on autopay ... car loan, mortgage, electric, etc

CC is manual pay since it varies so much month to month.

 

[big-papa]

Monthly bills that change very little (utilities, mortgage, internet and the like) are all on autopay.
Monthly bills that may fluctuate are on manual pay (credit card, mobile phone because I have a 17 year old who has pushed us over our limit more than once)
Non-Monthly bills like various insurance and tax bills are paid manually, but online. Can't remember the last time I wrote an actual check.

And to be clear, I define autopay two ways
1) Money pulled from my account by whomever is billing me
2) Automatic payments that I set up to be pushed from my checking account. Of course these are only for bills that never change.

 

[SecondCor521]

I have everything automated. I keep an eye on my Quicken projected balance over the next month or so to make sure all of the cash accounts stay in positive territory.

The only issue with this and being FIREd - and it is a very minor one if it is one at all - is that being out of touch means I'm not watching my bills as closely as I did before, which means that I'm not as likely to notice an increase in water usage or a new add-on charge on my insurance policy, so it's possible that there is some unnecessary waste in my spending.

On the one hand, this bothers my Scottish sensibilities and my pre-FIRE amibitions. On the other hand, I really should be spending more but am not, so some waste - if it even exists - is really completely irrelevant from a practical finances point of view.

 

[rk911]

don’t sweat the small stuff.

 

[jollystomper]

I'm more in the "trust but verify" mode when it comes to bills. I have very few that are auto paid. The rest are defined in my bank electronic pay system where I takes me maybe 10 minutes a month to verify the amount and then click and pay it. Since my pension is paid the 1st of the month I pay all bills within a few business days, to see what money is left over for the rest of the month (and if any needs to be transferred from savings for that month).

Like the OP I do monitor energy usage a bit, as we are on all electric and after our mortgage (not counting credit cards) it is the biggest bill we have.

 

[Qs Laptop]

Nothing on auto-pay. Have had debit card hacked three times in past 5 years. Also I don't micromanage my budget with Quicken or any other software. After 40 years of paying bills and managing my money I have a very good idea where it's all going. I don't need to know I've spent $9 last month on parking meters.

 

[target2019]

No bills are on auto-pay. I like being an active participant. We do move un-needed cash regularly into Roth or home improvements fund.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

I guess it is worry free in that I don't worry about bill payment at all. I do maintain a very definite level of awareness of how much I am paying for what.

I've got to say that overall I am a lot happier with my life, and home, than is MMM if this paragraph from his article is any indication: . Unlike MMM, I love my home so much and love the view of my back yard, which I have attached below and which is right before my eyes as I post. If this is not Heaven on earth, I don't know what is.

I am somewhat envious of your low maintenance yard. It seems with each new home, we "graduate" to more maintenance! The latest home keeps me very busy in the yard...probably 10-12 hours per week. But, although it's a lot of work, it's good exercise and I really do enjoy it more than I would have thought. Ask me again in 5 years, and I might want something not so "grand"...but for now, this is an absolute paradise for me.

 

[audreyh1]

I am somewhat envious of your low maintenance yard. It seems with each new home, we "graduate" to more maintenance! The latest home keeps me very busy in the yard...probably 10-12 hours per week. But, although it's a lot of work, it's good exercise and I really do enjoy it more than I would have thought. Ask me again in 5 years, and I might want something not so "grand"...but for now, this is an absolute paradise for me.

That looks very nice! Based on the trees you are up north somewhere?

Hiring out yard maintenance should be relatively easy.

 

[W2R]

Beautiful, ExFlyBoy5!!! What a great yard.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

That looks very nice! Based on the trees you are up north somewhere?

Hiring out yard maintenance should be relatively easy.

Thank you! We are actually on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. Many folks are surprised that Oklahoma has any trees in the state AT ALL, but from eastern OKC and to the east, it's fairly hilly with plenty of trees (and referred to as the "cross timbers")...so not all plains and wheat (and oil!). Granted, the trees aren't quite as tall as the ones from my home state of Georgia, but with the wild weather we have here...that's OK!

And of course, for the right price, anything can be done!

Beautiful, ExFlyBoy5!!! What a great yard.

Thank you! It was really the selling point of the house. We were originally going to build but we happened across this home as a distress sale (of sorts). Talking w/ the builder, it became evident that we would be much over our planned budget even before adding the "fun" things. The previous owner of this house spent a significant amount of time and money getting it where it is, so now it's up to us to try and keep it that way!

 

[audreyh1]

Not nearly as far north as I expected based on those droopy conifers.

 

[pb4uski]

I have some bills on auto pay but not all and I pay attention.

+1 As much as possible is on auto-pay for my convenience... but I still closely monitor what is spent as if I was writing out a check every month.

 

[2177V]

Most of my bills are on auto-pay except for credit cards and my electrical/gas bills because I need to monitor my spending and my energy use. Insurance tend to be critical but I only monitor the 6 month or 1 year declaration statements to make sure they are competitive.

 

[gooddog]

Everything on auto-pay, and don't worry about the cost of it. Might as well be comfortable.

 

[rk911]

Everything on auto-pay, and don't worry about the cost of it. Might as well be comfortable.

this! i still reconcile the credit card statement against credit receipts but the bill is auto paid.

 

[RobbieB]

Nothing on auto pay, just do internet banking pay. Never track expenses, just don't care. Never worry about money either.

 

[rk911]

Nothing on auto pay, just do internet banking pay. Never track expenses, just don't care. Never worry about money either.

i track and reconcile CC charges and statements as a defense against fraud and identity theft. we use CC for virtually everything.