Do you auto-pay your CC accounts?

[RunningBum]

I auto-pay everything I can, including credit cards. I get text notifications on a couple cards, and check PenFed pretty regularly for fraud.

 

[foxfirev5]

I pay as many bills as possible using auto pay with the Fido cash back card. However I manually enter the credit card payment from Fido bill pay. This due to occasional theft of the cc number. Since I already check the charges on a regular basis it's no big deal to make a payment with a couple of clicks.

 

[Sunset]

I autopay the min to avoid any possible ding to credit for missed payment, and on the day its due just logon, look things over quick and make the full balance payment (I ain't giving anyone a dime before it's actually due).

I used to do that, it works great, until something screws up like forgetting, on a trip, internet is down at home, too busy, etc.

I still do that for the odd CC , especially my new CC's that I won't keep and are making large purchases on.
I also like the "trick" of pre-paying early enough to be sure there is no missed payment at a minimum.

My Chase auto pay of CC does that on the day it's due, and I get an alert telling me the payment amount. It works well.

 

[razztazz]

Mine are set for auto-pay only in case I am in the hospital someday with some outstanding charges. I always login to my account 2 or 3 days after the charge and pay directly.

 

[kgtest]

I used to do that, it works great, until something screws up like forgetting, on a trip, internet is down at home, too busy, etc.

I still do that for the odd CC , especially my new CC's that I won't keep and are making large purchases on.
I also like the "trick" of pre-paying early enough to be sure there is no missed payment at a minimum.

My Chase auto pay of CC does that on the day it's due, and I get an alert telling me the payment amount. It works well.

DW would never let me forget lol. Every 15th of the month like clock work bills get paid. Works well for us and keeps the balance. Good to login 2x once to pay it and once to make sure it got paid (check the math)

 

[jazz4cash]

I manually push payments from checking account. I generally get an email with account balance and schedule full payment on due date from my phone. It takes 20 seconds. I do review the bill line by line but I also get email notice for every charge as they are posted.
The terminology here seems inconsistent: push, pull, autopay, billpay, etc. I consider ebill to be an invoice system. If I elect to receive them, they show up in my online banking. I can pay various amounts or pay some other way and still get paper and/or email bills too.

 

[Katsmeow]

For CCs, I pay online but don't do auto pay. I check my charges regularly and often pay during the month rather than when I get a statement. When I get a statement (online), I do go ahead and pay. I have alerts set up on my credit cards so I know when charges are made above a certain amount and know when there is a bill. For a long time, I got paper bills also in case I didn't notice a bill online but eventually I got rid of the paper statements because I had reduced the number of credit cards so it is easy to remember to check them.

 

[W2R]

For many years I didn't have a credit card other than one for work, which was strictly limited to US government expenses and never for personal use. I didn't want a personal credit card because I abhor debt.

But then the ER Forum led me to "the dark side" - - five years ago I got the Amazon Visa card after reading about it here, and that is my only credit card.

I have it set to auto-pay in full every month by automatic deduction from my checking account. I like this because I don't have to rely on my very imperfect memory to make sure I pay on time. Chase manages the credit card for Amazon, and I have no complaints about their autopay.

I still detest the idea of owing money to anybody but I guess this is almost like being debt free. I love spending the rewards on Amazon.

 

[SumDay]

I've used auto pay for all my CC's for years, because I don't like late fees. The older I get, the more I think this is a good idea for me. I've never had a problem.

ALL our bills are auto paid in one form or another. I write one check a month - to church. I want them to get the full contribution. And I like throwing something in the basket.

 

[CardsFan]

I autopay the min to avoid any possible ding to credit for missed payment, and on the day its due just logon, look things over quick and make the full balance payment (I ain't giving anyone a dime before it's actually due).

Bold by me.

I understand the sentiment, but last month my interest on the checking account was 57 cents. Not too worried about paying early and losing a dime. More concerned about forgetting and paying late, which cost $50 or so (with late payment penalty and interest).

 

[bobandsherry]

I've had my CC accounts all setup to auto pay full balance for what seems like forever. Never and issue and I never have to worry about missing a payment accidentally and paying a couple months of interest and late feedue to vacation, illness or just being plain dumb. Well worth it for me.

 

[karen1972]

I auto pay everything including credit cards, I let them pull it and pay in full.

I use to have one card that I would push pay and then I ended up going out of the country unexpected for work and forgot to pay, came home and switched it to auto-pay.

Its just routine now, get the email, download the statement into quicken, reconcile, enter the payment, and check my balance. I've never had any issues with it, though I only keep enough money in that account to cover 1 month of bills at a time.

 

[Rustic23]

Credit Cards are auto payed on the last day not to incur a penalty. Have for at least 5 years with no problems. Every time a card is charged I and DW get an email and text. That is how we check charges.

 

[Dawg52]

I started auto paying cc not long ago. Although I had reminders set up to pay online this is just easier. I review my acct 2-3 times a month plus look at my monthly online statement for bogus charges. I think I have most everything on auto pay now except condo fees.

 

[FireFool]

Nearly everything that can be auto-paid I do. My first choice is to have it drawn against a rebate credit card, but if they don't support that, or charge extra for CC's I'll usually allow them to pull ACH's from my checking account. I'd never allow a gym or other tiny businesses to auto pull from checking though - I don't trust their systems security capabilities, but I have no qualms about the major CC companies doing so. I still have them send paper bills that I review the charges and record in my checking account. The one e-bill that I was forced to do by my electric company in order to autopay with a credit card I'll admit gets very little monthly review and that's the primary reason I don't have other bills e-mailed - I need the paper prompt to do the scan of the charges put through. I never have to worry about late payments, and when I'm traveling I don't have to log on to any of my financial accounts on public/semi-public (e.g. rental condos) wi-fi's to pay any bills.

I've been auto-paying accounts for well over two decades at this point and have never had any problems.

 

[steelyman]

I auto pay everything I can on the due date in full, have done so for years. I’ve had only one instance that didn’t work and in that case it was the payee who’d been authorized to pull the monthly payment from my credit union checking account mistakenly taking it from my savings account. That generated a NSF charge but a call to the credit union got that removed.

Credit card auto pays have worked perfectly.

Apart from that, the more things I can have on autopilot, the happier I am.

 

[AnneG]

I have everything set up on auto-pay. If a bill will take a CC then I set that up. Otherwise, it comes directly out of checking on the due date. I've never had an issue. I did have one CC that wouldn't let me autopay the statement balance and after forgetting one payment and incurring a late fee, I set it up to autopay $100 should I forget to go in and set the correct amount. Otherwise, it's worked flawlessly. I hate paying bills! It's probably my least favorite chore, so autopay makes it a lot less painful.

 

[REWahoo]

No, I do not auto-pay CC accounts.

I do auto-pay all my recurring expenses (electric, ISP, garbage, etc.) via a charge to a CC, and take the opportunity to review all charges when I get my monthly CC e-statement. When I am satisfied all charges are legit, I use my bank's bill pay software to set up payment in full a day or two before the due date.

 

[FireFool]

Mine are set for auto-pay only in case I am in the hospital someday with some outstanding charges. I always login to my account 2 or 3 days after the charge and pay directly.

My reaction to this was "but why", but when it comes to finances everyone has their own way of doing things so if this is what makes you comfortable that's great. Someone else in this thread talked about not having any credit cards until recently getting a Chase Amazon, because they abhorred debt and only recently "fell into the dark side". I've never really consider my monthly credit card(s) balance as debt because it gets paid in full every month and never incurs any interest charges. I have multiple rebate credit cards to maximize my rebates. I also can't comprehend having only one and thus traveling with only one credit card, worrying about if one were ever to be frozen/locked. When traveling overseas I also carry two different banks ATM cards, again worrying about not having access to cash when needed. Those admittedly are my oddities/financial insecurities.

I think being an early retirement forum we might bias towards people that may live their lives overly conservatively - but again if that's what's allowed people to retire all the more power. For me I try to auto pay everything and all of them are set up to pay the prior monthly balance in full exactly on the due date. Since it's auto pay through the respective institutions if they were ever to be late it would have been a function of that institutions systems problems and they'd have to waive the late fees. That being said in doing this for decades I've never had a problem ever.

 

[razztazz]

My reaction to this was "but why".......

..... Since it's auto pay through the respective institutions if they were ever to be late it would have been a function of that institutions systems problems and they'd have to waive the late fees. That being said in doing this for decades I've never had a problem ever.

Why do I do it this way? Because what I really want is the bill cleared immediately. That's why I only have the auto-pay in case of incapacitation. I see no reason to let bills linger and linger knowing they'll be paid.

Yes, I have been doing this forever and have never had anything approaching even a tiny non-problem-problem. I really do not understand other people's problems with it. As well as the hang-ups some have about debit cards. But I would not lecture them about it because, as you say, this kind of forum tends to pull in belt-and-suspenders types. If there's something you can make safer, you'll probably do it.

 

[DeborahB]

I have nay CC and all other bills paid in full monthly through Ally. I set up an automatic transfer from Ally savings to checking to cover it.

 

[harllee]

I autopay everything except my credit cards. There are a couple of reasons I like don't autopay the credit cards--First, I like to closely review all the charges on the credit card before I authorize payment. I have found a few errors over the years--some fraudulent charges and a few double payments. The other reason I don't autopay my credit cards is that sometimes my credit card bills are very large, like this month I owe about $10,000 on one credit card (put part of my car purchase on my credit card to get the cash back). I don't keep that much in my checking and I have to transfer some funds into my checking account from a money market account and I don't want an autopay to hit before I get the transfers complete.

 

[big-papa]

I autopay only a few things via pull. Mainly utilities. I autopay via auto push for those items that never change like my mortgage. For the rest, I do a manual push from my checking account, including the credit card.

 

[Cobra9777]

Your routing/acct# info is not exactly a secret, so I don't get the worry over having it compromised. You give it away every time you write a check or pay a bill from your bank account...

cathy, can you perhaps elaborate on the bolded part? A check, I understand; it's printed at the bottom. But on an electronic bill-pay??... Are you suggesting that I provide my bank's routing#/account# to the vendor every time I pay them using electronic bill-pay?

 

[Golden sunsets]

Ditto on autopay pulls for our credit cards -full payment of course. We’ve arranged that all 4 of the cards that we use cut off on the 28th of the month, to match month end periods as closely as possible. Pulls on all autopays occur on the 25th of the following month. I review charges long before the payment date to ensure that charges are legit.

Any bill that I can arrange autopay to a cc rather than checking, I charge to cc rather than a pull. Some utilities charge a fee for cc charge, so those are a pull from checking.

I recently removed one bill from autopay out of pure irritation. AT&T wireless recently changed their autopay billing from, date of bill due, to 3 days after bill invoice date, causing two bills the first month of the change. I was so irritated with this change that I took the our account off autopay. But I now have to arrange for the push, which I’d prefer to automate, so I may relent soon.