Here at T L Wall Accounting, one of the things we talk about helping people with is paying their bills. A part of that is helping people budget their money, personally and professionally. Another part, which we don’t talk about all that often, is setting up processes to pay your bills.

Did you know that you can set up every single monthly bill you owe to be paid automatically through your bank? It’s not only a way to make sure your bills get paid each month, but it puts you in better control of your money than allowing a third party to take money directly out of your account. That might not be an option when it comes to things like life insurance, but in general everything else can be set up that way.

Depending on the bank, it can be a pretty easy process, although in many cases people feel more comfortable having someone else help with it. As long as who you have to pay has an account number it can be done. Many people pay their mortgages this way, along with things such as utility bills, car insurance, cable… everything.

Once it’s set up, you can always go online and change the amounts at any time, since it’s accessed the same way you access your bank account. For instance, say you and your spouse or partner make payments on something and one of you pays more than normal at some point. If you have the ability to skip a payment or make a reduced payment for one month, you can adjust it easily. Also, suppose that you’ve gone over your data usage on your smartphone and they’ve imposed a penalty, then you could go in and adjust the payment to make it higher.

Your payment will go out on whatever date you tell it to. It might take up to 3 days before it registers as a payment for some vendors, but for most they’ll see it in a day, even if it takes a few days to clear. No mess, no fuss, and no more late payments.

If this is something you’d like to do and you’d like some help with it, feel free to ask us to help you.