I'm all for simplifying our finances. If I could I would put all credit cards and Verizon and Medicare on auto payments. DW does all the bill paying and is leery, loss of control she says. From what I see you have control by way of email notification of upcoming debits or charges.
Was wondering if folks on FIRE use auto pay? Any concerns?
Thanks
I do on most credit cards which tend to be consistent or under a certain amount so I know they are going to be covered by typically maintained balances, but not on the main one which is highly variable and can sometimes be quite large.
I still review each statement and reconcile it before the bill will be paid. Scheduled recurring payments are updated in Quicken so I always know what is going to be paid over the next month.
Most of my credit cards are automatically paid through ebill scheduled payments, not draft, so I can see the scheduled bill payments, and I auto pay the statement balance on the recent bill. I can edit and change these which I do if I receive a credit in the meantime. Even the couple that are drafted by the issuer tell me what they are going to debit in advance, and I can turn auto pay off at any time.
Any recurring bill we can like cellphone we auto pay by using a credit card.
Medicare we’re trying to set up to pay via bank bill pay from an HSA account. We’re still trying to figure out the timing/lag in terms of crediting the account. The initial payments were done online using the HSA debit card and took about 3 days to draw/credit. Otherwise, Medicare requires the bank to mail a check, and we are watching to see how long it takes to be deposited and then credited in online bill pay history. We didn’t want to use EasyPay directly drafting the HSA account.
Your DW needs to modify her bill paying procedure a bit to verify pending payments and use bank billpay ebills where possible. But since she is doing the bill paying, what does this “simplification” matter to you? It might be a lot of work for her initially. Yes, it does mean less control in some respects. Is she already doing online bill paying? If not, that’s a big transition.