I PAID INTEREST TODAY!!! BLAAAAAHHHH!!!!
That was pretty close to my actual reaction. I changed which bank account was paying off my credit card this month and I forgot to check the "autopay" button on the new account. I missed the deadline by two days and paid $8 in interest. This was on my American Express account. My other credit cards consider AutoPay to be a standing function regardless of which checking account is paying the bill. With AMEX you have to set it each time.
I don't autopay my credit cards. I go in every 2 weeks, look at the charges, and then pay. Call me a bit paranoid, but I do like to check.
I pay it off weekly when reviewing charges, but I still have auto-pay set up in case I forget or am unable to pay them. It would suck for them to accrue interest that my wife would have to pay if I suddenly died.
I did this for years, back when Bank of
EvilAmerica refused to offer full-balance autopay. I had the autopay amount set to the usual minimum payment for my level of spending (i.e., the minimum-minimum), so if I forgot to log in I wouldn't get a late fee.
Now that all of my accounts autopay in full, I just go in at the end of the month (mid-cycle for all of my CCs) to download the data into my spreadsheet, which also covers checking for spurious charges.
In practice, though, the very few times I've had bad charges in the past ten years or so, almost every single one was caught by the bank and alerted to me automatically. Only one time I can think of that I spotted one on my own, and that was for a very small charge (someone managed to order themselves some Chipotle on my dime).