Sunday, September 30, 2012

No More Late Fees

By: Michelle

You can easily nickle and dime yourself to death by committing small no-no's during the month, but these pesky little problems are much more pronounced when you get smacked with a big-old late payment charge. There are so many resources out there that you can take advantage of, not only avoid these fees, but in some cases, to save money!


A lot of companies have direct withdrawal that you can set up that pulls money right out of your checking account on a specific day of the month. These are not only valuable for the obvious reason of not having to remember what day you need to send a check, but many times, these companies offer you discounts off of your monthly bill just for signing up! One thing to remember, however, is that you should always be checking your account for incorrect information. As much as I love direct withdrawals for their convience, I still do not completely trust every company (or any company for that matter). There are some companies that I have been working with for a long time (Verizon, State Farm, ect.) that I have never had a problem with, but once I have a problem, I yank that service, and I go to my plan B resource: bill-pay.

First, I must say that I am not particularly fond of big banks. However, they do offer some great products that I am not quite sure how I would live without! One of these products is automatic bill-pay. US Bank has a great system that is 100% FREE! All I have to do is type in the name of the payee, their address, my account number with them, and how much I would like to pay, and they send off a check to them by the date I specify. You can set up recurring bills, or just one-time payments! Did I mention that you save A TON of money by not having to buy checks? The only check I actually hand-write anymore is for our housing.


My Our advice to you is to get as many of your bills signed up for these services as you can! Doing this will mean that you will never have a late-payment again, and more importantly, no late-charges! If you ask us, there is nothing worse than paying more than you have to!

Since you have figured out all of you recurring bills (you have, haven't you?), your homework today will be easy! Go through your payments, and get them all set up for either automatic withdrawal (through the companies website, or over the phone), or through your bank's automatic bill-pay.

Enjoy your day!!!


If you are having immediate problems with money, send us an email at m.myselfinc@yahoo.com, and we will answer any and all question that we can, and if we are unable to answer your questions we will most certainly point you in the direction of someone who can! All emails are completely confidential.

Special thanks to...
Etsy

You might also like...
Introduction to Budgeting
TGIF: Money Edition
Organizing Recurring Bills

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