Save Money by
Paying Bills Online
I
have used online bill pay since March 11, 2011 when my bank sent me an email
asking me to sign up for online bill payment and offered me a $50 bonus for
registering. At the time, I signed up
just to receive the $50 bonus, but as time went on I continued to use online
bill payment because of the convenience and monetary savings. Eventually, I realized this habit had saved
our family a significant amount of money in the past seventeen months.
I
did some figuring and broke it down to see how much money I have saved over the past seventeenth
months. I currently have twelve bills that I pay every month and one bill that
I pay twice a year.
I
wasn’t sure about the cost of a postage stamp since the invention of the Forever
Stamp, so I had to check online to make sure that a postage stamp costs 45 cents.
My
checks come from Carousel Checks, since they have always been the least
expensive checks for me. I can order only half a box of checks, since one box
will last me for years, which is 125 checks for $3.99, which works out to 3¢
per check.
Cost
of Checks 3¢ per check
Cost
of Stamps -45¢ per stamp
12
monthly bills would cost me $5.76 per month
4
bi-yearly bills would cost me $1.92
Yearly
Cost $71.04
Total
Cost Saved Over 17 Months: $100.08
This
amount might not seem significant to some people, but to me $100.08 would go a
long way in my budget because every penny I save is a penny I don’t need to
earn. It is enough money to pay for at least four of my monthly bills. For many
people this number will be significantly higher depending on the number of bills
they have each month.
If
your bank charges for online bill pay you can shop around and find a new bank
that does not charge for this service. Banks need your business and there are
many large reputable banks that offer free online bill pay. Personally, I bank
with First Tennessee and have been very pleased with their online bill pay
service.
Do
you use online bill pay? If so leave a comment and tell us about your experience
with online bill pay.
Belinda
© Belinda Richardson and Frugal Workshop, 2012.
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without”
Hi Belinda,
ReplyDeleteI use online and phone-in bill payments selectively, if the rewards are good. I can use my rewards/cash back Visa on our utility, medical/dental bills and home and car insurance, either online or by phone. We earn the rewards on the card while paying the bills. For the Visa bill itself, I know that it comes on or around a certain date every month, so I just have a reminder on my calendar to phone in my payment. No rewards to phoning in the Visa card payment, but I know its paid on time and in full and there will be no finance/late charges.
I was just thinking the other day about the savings on checks and stamps from doing this. You're right, it really does add up.
I still have a couple of bills that would cost me a bit more to set up the online service, so continue with checks for those.
Excellent point, Lili about earning rewards while paying your bills! I know I paid a portion of my Discover bill in June with my reward balance of $55.
DeleteI think the only thing I write checks for these days are to my daughter's school. I love the convenience of online bill paying because it has freed up so much time.
This is one area where I will never be a Luddite. I love online bill pay. For things that I absolutely know will not change in amount from month to month, I have the payments sent out automatically at the same time each month.
ReplyDeleteBefore this, I finally figured out that I needed to call all of my vendors and ask for the due dates of the bills to be by X date. That way, I could just sit down and write the checks in one evening and everything got paid. When they came in at different times during the month, I'd bring the bill with me to work, meaning to mail it from there, and forget about it. Or something similar would happen. Sometimes I'd still misplace a bill. I am not very organized and get very easily distracted--sometimes I'd be late on a bill not because I didn't have the money but rather because I had misplaced it/forgotten all about it.
I love online bill pay too, Pamela. Like I was telling Lili, It has freed up so much of my time. I love the fact that I can just pay everything in just a few minutes and forget about it. It is one of the best things they ever created. :)
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