Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for May 13th, 2005

I think on line banking has made my life more complicated, but has also allowed me to do a few things I would never have been able to do, if I’d had to go to a bank to do it.

1) I can pay my bills when the money appears in my account RIGHT AWAY, and thus I don’t have the “opportunity” to squander the money elsewhere. Remember, I talk a good game, but I don’t always follow my own advice

2) I get paid BI-Weekly (i.e. every two weeks) but most things get billed MONTHLY (e.g. mortgages, electric, gas, etc.,), so what I do is pay 1/2 of a bill on 1 pay cheque and half on the other.

Example Scenario, say my monthly bills were:
Mortgage: $650 Property Tax: $200 Electric: $80 Phone: $40 Gas: $90

Each pay cheque I have each of these “bills” set up on my automatic bill payment side that on my PAY DAY (no later than that or I would have squandered my money by then) I make the following payments:
Mortgage: $325 Property Tax $100 Electric: $40 Phone: $20 Gas: $45

and twice a year I don’t have to pay these at all, or better still for debt like my Mortgage I can get ahead of the game and have 2 extra payments!

Now some companies don’t seem to like getting paid in installments, but I haven’t got any complaints directly from them (Gas grumbled once, claiming I hadn’t paid, when I had).

3) If I forget a bill, I can quickly pay it without having to get to a bank branch!

I still hate paying bills, but at least with on line banking my life is a little easier

–C8J