Managing Money God’s Way

The majority of households today use some form of automatic bill payment.  Whether you have an automatic draft taken directly from your checking account or use your credit card to automatically pay a few bills, the convenience of not having to write a check for every single bill is great.  However, with every good thing there is usually a downside. How can there be a downside to not having to write a check and find a stamp and remember to take it to the mailbox? Glad you asked.

The convenience of getting an email that says your bill has been paid is great, but you need to take the next step and actually look at the bill that has just been paid.  To often the bill you just paid will include some unexpected fee that you didn’t know would be there, or maybe that credit card account now has a higher interest rate, but you didn’t know they were raising the fee because you didn’t review the statement when they said you had 30 days to opt-out of the rate hike.

This is what I like to call Bill Creep.  Like a cluttered garage, often times our monthly expenses get cluttered with things that we continue to pay for, but probably no longer need.  Other things that can wreck your month without you knowing about it are things that at one time sounded like a good idea, but because of changes in your life, now just aren’t practical.  One example is a gym membership.  When you made that New Year’s resolution to get into shape you signed up for the two-year membership because of the New Year’s special they were running.  Good deal you thought – ‘best value’.  However, do you really need to pay extra each month for a personal trainer and massage?  Sure it makes you feel good, but is the value really worth the extra amount you are paying?

What can you do to combat the ‘Bill Creep’?  First, commit to reviewing each and every bill that you receive.  If there are new services or fees being tacked onto your account, call the customer service rep and kindly ask them to be removed.  Surprisingly, during this economic downturn, most companies are willing to work with customers rather than lose them.  Also, determine if you really need all the extra services that you may have agreed to.  Do you still need all three of those movie channels?  What about your cell phone?  Does the service provider now offer a better package that includes the same (or more) minutes that you just didn’t know about?  A few minutes of diligence can save you a lot of money over the period of a year.