To Auto Pay or Not

The short answer is "No. Not. Niet. Nada. Never."

Yes, I know its fun to play with the settings and neat to watch the computer do our work for us automatically. And supposedly you then don't have to worry about the bills. They will take care of themselves.

But I have seen so many, many people paying fee after fee, month after month because they forgot to have the money in the account or they mis-programmed the auto pay, or their income was delayed. I just don't think it's a good idea.

I don't do the bulk of our family's bills. Hubby takes care of most of them in our division of labor. But I do care for a couple of them (besides groceries, which is in my domain). But I am our Church's Secretary treasurer, so I do have some experience with paying bills! And a church doesn't generally have a regular income. Our donations can vary from month to month by as much as $1000. That's a lot for such a tiny church.

So, here's how I make sure I don't forget any bills for the church:

• I keep the records in Excel, and each month has its own chart. 
• I copy and paste the bills from each old month into the new month, deleting most of the information from the old month and changing the names of months.
• I DON'T delete the names of the bills I pay each month. I leave them in the "transaction" column in the new month.
• On the first of the month when I pay bills, I can simply go down the list and pay each one I paid the month before. 
• I do use our bank's online banking program and Paypal to pay our bills. This is a back up to remember bills, since the online banking lists all the addresses and names of each bill I've ever paid through them. I simply scan down the list and make sure I haven't forgotten any of them. A quick scan of last month's Paypal records does the same thing for the bills I pay through them.

When my mom took care of the church's books, she didn't use computers. So, she made a list in a designated notebook that stayed with the physical church books of each bill that needed paying. She then drew a grid by each bill with a check box for each month of the year. As she paid a bill, she checked the right box for the month for that bill. She could easily tell at a glance what bills had been paid and what ones hadn't.

Now, for our home, I do have one company I buy from monthly that insists we have auto pay. There simply is no other way to buy from them. So, for that household bill I took out a free AkimboCard.com account and designated one of the sub-cards just for this bill. I check every week (I'm paid weekly) to make sure the balance is $20 (this bill is $17 a month). If the balance is less than $20 I add money to it, no matter when the bill is due. Once the money is in that account, it is NOT mine and is NOT available to spend at anytime.

But I really don't like to do this. Though I like regular expenses to be in their own account so I don't spend it, I want to be the one to decide when it is spent.

It just doesn't make sense to me to constantly pay fines and fees or to have to haunt "automatic" accounts to make sure everything is running smoothly. If I have to pay that much attention, I might as well be in complete control.