How do you manage your bills?

[drwex]

From conversation this weekend it appeared that several of us have different strategies for managing bills/family money. Here's what we do:

- Pygment and I deposit our paychecks into a shared account. She gives me money from that account when I need it. (I joked that this was sort of like the Japanese traditional "sarariman" model.)
- She pays the bills, having taken that over from me.
- We jointly review any major expenditure
- We pay bills twice a month (1st and 15th). We did some jiggering with things like credit cards to move payments around so one of the two payment cycles isn't overloaded. I get paid twice a month so bill payments get balanced out against paychecks.
- We have one centralized online service for bills (PayTrust, owned by Intuit) and don't use our bank's online system. We may move to paying the CC bills online using Visa's or other issuer's site. I find it convenient to have my billing address be the same as my shipping address for CC.

What do you guys do?

Comments

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

We pay our bills almost exclusively through our bank's billpay because they already have all our info, so why pay extra to hand it off to another site. (That's my thinking, anyway. I appreciate that situations vary.) Everything that is the same amount each month is on autopay while the ones that aren't, I enter the numbers to schedule the payments. (That could be automated, too, but I'm more comfortable this way.)

[ETA: Oh, right, and any bills that can be paid by credit card with no additional fee are auto-paid that way. Cash back and all.]

The only bill I'm not currently paying through my bank's billpay is my credit card, and that's only because I've been using their online payment since before my bank had it.

[nounsandverbs]

We operate under a "share" system: each adult in the household pays a fixed amount per month. In some cases, like with me and K, one partner pays for both. One member of our household has variable income, so he basically pays everything he gets into the house, as he gets it.

That money goes into a household account, from which I pay the bills every month. For major expenses, or unpredictable expenses, we'll come up with a separate arrangement. For example, recently the roof on one of the cottages needed fixing. The family members who had the money, fronted the expense.

We find it best to be as easygoing as possible about money, and not to worry too much about who paid what, when -- that way leads to discord. We take the longest possible view and figure it'll all balance out eventually.

[davidfcooper.livejournal.com]

Similar to yours except we are a one income household. Shoshana's paycheck is deposited directly into our checking account. The cable, cell phone, and some insurance bills are paid automatically every month out of a cash rewards credit card. The phone, mortgage, one of our credit cards, electric, and another insurance bills (all of which will not do automatic payments with credit cards) are automatically paid every month out of our checking account. Shoshana balances the checkbook and writes checks to pay other bills and snail mails them. I manage our investments. To summarize, Shoshana manages short-term cash flow, and I manage long-term investments.

[ckd]

I use my bank's billpay system, for much the same reason that surrealestate does (they have the info) and also because I trust a "push" model more than I do a "pull" model (letting another vendor take money from the bank vs having the bank send money on my behalf).

Any recurring bills that can be put on credit cards are, both for better protection and for rewards. The credit cards from that bank are set to auto-pay (the full amount, since I dont carry balances) from appropriate accounts on their due dates (I always check the statements, but this way I don't have to specifically schedule a payment) but I still have to manually schedule the SkyMiles card payment.

Gas and electric bills are set to auto-pay via the bank, with a threshold to keep any particularly high ones from going through without being looked at first.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

I trust a "push" model more than I do a "pull" model

This - i have heard horror stories about "pull" payments on mortgages.

yeah, auto-withdrawal scares me

[drwex]

The only time I've enabled it was on a mortgage, though, because they gave me a quarter-point off on the interest. That was a pretty hefty sum of savings, which I figured was insurance against something going wrong.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

Cellphones and my colo provider auto-bill to a credit card. One credit card is set up so I can transfer funds to pay it from one of my accounts. Everything else gets paid by check.

When mail comes in, I dump it into a box that sits in the entryway. Every weekend, I sit down with a pot of tea and go through the box to deal with new mail - paying bills, skimming magazines, etc; I also check online bank and credit card info to check that nothing weird is going on and what checks have cleared.

For a while when I was the only source of income in the household, I was setting aside all bills and then going over them with clauclauclaudia or letting her pay them so she got a feel for the flow of money in and out for bills she normally doesn't handle. The gas bill is in her name, so she handles paying that one all the time.

[ciani.livejournal.com]

I pay mortgage, electric, gas, cable, groceries. Kelly pays water, makes some purchases (toilet paper, detergent, paper towels ie: non food stuff you can get at target) and gives me some money every month. We each pay our own car loans, credit cards. We work out individual expenses as they arise (like pet visits, fixing things on the house, buying mulch, etc). We keep our paychecks separate. Kelly is way better at budgeting than I am, but she also has no desire to take over the entire household budget. (I would absolutely let her)

[klingonlandlady.livejournal.com]

We both contribute to a shared "house expenses" account. I pay bills from there- some by check, some online. We both refill the account with an equal amount when it gets low.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

Mikes paycheck goes into checking, mine goes into savings. Money is moved around from there as needed. We are both on all of our accounts.

I handle all our finances. I pay the bills, I manage the budget, I handle our investments. However, Mike manages his 401K & IRA rebalancing (I invest like an 80 year old, so that's wise); he took that over about 10 years ago when he got frustrated that I invest like an 80 year old.

I use the online banking system to pay bills. Where possible, I have bills paid automatically by the credit card, for rewards & extra protection (the extra float is worthless these days). I pay the bills when they come in.

We discuss large purchases (anything >$50ish).

Mike is absolutely positively not interested in managing our finances, or even being an active participant. I take his willingness to manage his retirement investments as a good step, but if I get hit by a bus tomorrow he needs to be able to step in, and he can't. Part of this is that he has trouble saving, and if he was regularly reminded we had "extra" he'd be tempted to spend it.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

We have separate checking accounts (and I have a personal savings account), and we have a shared ING savings account. Every month I auto-deposit money for rent and utilities (pro-rated, taking various factors into account) and he withdraws that money to make those payments. We each pay our own credit card and phone bills. I pay the car insurance. We jointly agree on the use of money from the ING account for major expenditures, such as car repairs, travel, and the like.

[srakkt.livejournal.com]

Like surrealestate, I use the bank's billpay - this covers everything automatically while I am deployed, to include rent, for which the bank issues and posts a paper check to my landlord, all without a fee for that service. They get my direct-deposit, which is used to pay my CC bill (which is also through them, and which I use for online shopping while I'm here) and so on and so forth. About the only finances USAA does not handle for me currently is retirement finances, for which I "Have A Guy" whose office again gets a regular automatic paper check.

[catya.livejournal.com]

Complexly. :)

All income earners are direct depositing into their own accounts.

Dave & I pay weekly into a joint checking account, some of which goes into joint savings for annual expenses like school, some of which goes out to / is pulled for monthly joint bills, and some of which comes back to my account as child support. All of that is specified in the divorce agreement.

DWG autotransfers me a flat rent/utilities/food amount each month. I autotransfer Z a flat amount each week, 5% of which then goes into his charity account (this is all dcu so far). I autotransfer $x/wk into savings, $y/month into tax savings.

Everything else is done in quicken, except the utilities which get to pull from my checking account. I master track everything in quicken. (I pay quicken $10/month for the billpay feature, which is then a schedule c business expense)

[sykotropic.livejournal.com]

Very clever with the bill pay feature. Thanks for the tip!