help in organizing bill paying

[cooking]

Can I please get some ideas on the most efficient way of setting up the payment of my household bills and utilities?  It is mostly utilities and mortgages.  I really want to go paperless to eliminate all the incoming clutter.  However, I don't want to have to log into all different accounts with different usernames and passwords that I forget, get locked out of and need to change the passwords all the time.  (In case it isn't already obvious, I'm not good with tech.  A learning curve is fine with me, as long as it becomes more streamlined in the end.)

I use bill payer on line within my bank account in order to pay my credit card bill.  I see that they have something there about linking in my bills, but I like to stay in control of the process and do the actual payments myself, so I haven't explored that option.  Is there a way to get my bills to go to my bill payer account but still pay them myself?  Or is there some better way that others are using that I never heard of?

[shuffler]

Look into eBills.

Example info:
https://www.ebillplace.com/cda/ebillplace/aboutebills/about-ebills.html
https://www.bankofamerica.com/online-banking/ebills-faqs/

Yes, you should be able to choose to manually approve/pay them, rather than automatically.

[Sandi_k]

I use mycheckfree.com - load up the accounts, and pay from one portal.

I've been using them for 15+ years. Free, too!

[roomtempmayo]

I like to stay in control of the process and do the actual payments myself, so I haven't explored that option.  Is there a way to get my bills to go to my bill payer account but still pay them myself?  Or is there some better way that others are using that I never heard of?

This doesn't directly answer you question, but automating all of my bills was one of the best financial decisions I've made.

Here's what I did:
- Calculated the total monthly amount of my bills.
- Set up a dedicated checking account for those bills.
- Seeded the account with 2x the monthly bills.
- Set up a monthly direct deposit in the amount of the bills.

Voila, never pay bills again!

Knowing that my bills are just math and that a computerrobotservant is taking care of them for me gives me a tremendous feeling of control.

[Catbert]

Techniques that might help:

Get bills charged to a CC so you have less to remember to pay. 

Change the due date on bills so they are all due at the same time facilitating sitting down once a month to pay.

Decide which bills you feel comfortable setting up as auto-pay (i.e., they pull money from your checking account).  For me that's mortgage payments since they are same amount each month and minimum payment on CCs to prevent any late fee in case I somehow don't otherwise pay them.

Paying ahead so you don't need to remember/take action.  For example, I get Netflix gift cards at the grocery store and pay ~6 months ahead with a CC as back up.

[RWD]

I set everything on auto-pay which virtually eliminates stress over paying bills. I have a spreadsheet with every financial-related account (banks, credit cards, mortgage, utilities, investments, etc.). I have the passwords to all of these saved in my browser's password manager. Every payday I go through the list sequentially and log into each account and update our accounting records (GnuCash). I then make sure I have enough in our checking account to cover at least one month's worth of bills/credit card payments and sweep any excess off to be earmarked for investing.

[cheaplynn]

Here's what I did:
- Calculated the total monthly amount of my bills.
- Set up a dedicated checking account for those bills.
- Seeded the account with 2x the monthly bills.
- Set up a monthly direct deposit in the amount of the bills.

Voila, never pay bills again!

Knowing that my bills are just math and that a computerrobotservant is taking care of them for me gives me a tremendous feeling of control.

I love solutions like this that are so simple they're almost stupid. I was just working out bills stuff today and saw your system and it's like *chef kiss* THIS IS PERFECT.

[MDM]

Can I please get some ideas on the most efficient way of setting up the payment of my household bills and utilities?  It is mostly utilities and mortgages.  I really want to go paperless to eliminate all the incoming clutter.  However, I don't want to have to log into all different accounts with different usernames and passwords that I forget, get locked out of and need to change the passwords all the time.  (In case it isn't already obvious, I'm not good with tech.  A learning curve is fine with me, as long as it becomes more streamlined in the end.)

Have you tried a "password manager"?  E.g., one of
The Best Password Managers for 2021 | PCMag or
The Best Free Password Managers for 2021 | PCMag?

We use KeePass, which just barely makes it to the end of the second list, and it works very well so we have no incentive to change.  If the others are superior for someone just starting, so much the better.

Or is there some better way that others are using that I never heard of?

The definition of "better" will be subjective, but what has worked for us is
- everything set up for automatic bill pay by the vendor
  a) charging our cash-back credit card if possible, or
  b) auto-debiting our checking account
- all recurring bills set up in Quicken (info only - not using Quicken BillPay).  Once a month, use Quicken's forecasting to look at the coming month's checking account balance and move money in (e.g., when a large annual bill comes due) or out (e.g., when we have enough extra to invest) as appropriate.

[jac941]

We setup bill payment through our checking account. All the bills come there and we can either automatically pay them or set them up to be manually paid. I’m pretty sure every major bank has this now.

Even when our kids were in daycare and preschool I setup the account to mail a check a certain day each month.

I also recommend a password manager. Every account we have has a separate password. We’re up to 130 passwords or something ludicrous. The password manager really helps.

[cooking]

Thanks to all of you who replied for some very good suggestions..  Sounds like I probably should have set up the password manager part long ago as it probably would have saved tons of frustration.  Does it make the access less secure though?  I will also look into the other avenues mentioned for the actual payments and try to figure out what would work best in my situation.  Thanks again.

[lutorm]

Thanks to all of you who replied for some very good suggestions..  Sounds like I probably should have set up the password manager part long ago as it probably would have saved tons of frustration.  Does it make the access less secure though?  I will also look into the other avenues mentioned for the actual payments and try to figure out what would work best in my situation.  Thanks again.

I was going to suggest a password manager, too, but since that's already been done, I'll respond to the "does it make access less secure?" question.

It depends. The general conclusion is that whatever risk you incur of having a breach that sends all your passwords to Russia is far outweighed by the fact that your passwords will now a) not be shared between accounts, b) not be "<dogsname><street number>" but rather something like "V@zyn5n@3rt#YL" (generated by my bitwarden just now), and c) not be typed into "www.bankofamerica.com.ru" by accident when you click on a phishing email.

Depending on how paranoid you are, you can also enable 2-factor authentication, which makes it so that even if someone guesses you master password. your passwords can still not be accessed without the code from your phone or whatever.

Now, it obviously IS important to pick a reputable manager since you are trusting that their code does what it claims it does. Any of the ones in that list should be reasonable unless you work for NSA or something.

[jac941]

I agree with lutorm regarding security.

In addition to multi factor authentication, I will add that you should use one strong password for the password manager and a different strong password for your email account that you use to reset all of your passwords. And that email password should ideally NOT be in the password manager. Then if someone steals it all, they can’t reset the passwords easily.

[Sibley]

I have a couple things that bill directly to the credit card. Pay the credit card, not each separate bill. It helps.

But most of my stuff is automated. Either automatic pulls, or automatic pushes. Depends on which bill pay site is better for the situation. I do have to write one check monthly because the town is backwards and I'm not willing to pay a $3.50 fee every month to have them pull the money directly. And I thus far have preferred to go to the credit card website to do the payment every month, but you can set up reoccuring payments.

I could further streamline things, but I'm happy with my setup for now. I do have an excel file which tracks all of this, including where the auto payments are setup.