lazy customer = "You don't care"

[Barefootgirl]

I pay my bills by Direct Debit. The company sends me a bill, the money comes out of my bank account without me having to do anything, i know exactly how much is coming out because i get the paper / email bill every month, jobs a good'un. Its a lot easier than messing around with chequebooks, envelopes, bill stubs, etc. Things don't get "lost in the post". The money goes straight from my account into the utility company or credit card company's account and everyone is happy.

[Andara Bledin]

I pay my bills by Direct Debit. The company sends me a bill, the money comes out of my bank account without me having to do anything, i know exactly how much is coming out because i get the paper / email bill every month, jobs a good'un. Its a lot easier than messing around with chequebooks, envelopes, bill stubs, etc. Things don't get "lost in the post". The money goes straight from my account into the utility company or credit card company's account and everyone is happy.

Just a quick warning, but automated bill payments are pretty much impossible to stop if the company goes evil. You have to completely close an account to stop the payments going through. Someone here had to do that recently, if my memory is right.

It's usually better to just keep track of what bills get paid every month, and then make the payments manually.

I've let T Mobile do the automated thing for the last couple years because I'm lazy. That, and T Mobile has been nothing but great for me since I started with them, so I'm not worried right now.

Earthlink, however, has messed up our account by replacing their excellent customer service reps with a passel of what appear to be nothing but booger-eating morons, so I'm glad they've stopped taking automated payments.

^-.-^

[CancelMyService]

For what it's worth, you call up my company and say "I want to stop the automatic payment" and we clear out the info under the recurring card/autodebit section.

Some companies do make it more difficult, AOL was famous for continuing to bill people after they canceled their service (hey, that's kind of catchy!).

[Seshat]

Good advice for life. I only use mine if I have the funds to pay for it immediately. It's a convenience for me for those places that don't take my debit card.

We use ours for emergencies, then repay it almost immediately from our emergency fund.

On the rare occasions when we have two emergencies in a row and clean out our emergency savings, we use the credit card then draw back from our mortgage to pay back the credit card.

The mortgage has a much lower interest rate, so borrowing on the mortgage is much cheaper than keeping the debt on the credit card.

Then we save to rebuild our emergency fund, then add extra repayments on the mortgage to cover what we ended up borrowing from that.

Even if it takes eating the cheapest healthy food you can afford, it's worth staying as debt-free as possible, and keeping your debt on the lowest interest rates you can.

(Note that there are some types of loan where the fees cancel out the 'lower interest rate'. Watch out for those when rate-shopping. Other than that sort of trap - low-rate is the way to go.)

[Geek King]

On the rare occasions when we have two emergencies in a row and clean out our emergency savings, we use the credit card then draw back from our mortgage to pay back the credit card.

The mortgage has a much lower interest rate, so borrowing on the mortgage is much cheaper than keeping the debt on the credit card.

Then we save to rebuild our emergency fund, then add extra repayments on the mortgage to cover what we ended up borrowing from that.

You sound like you have a firm grasp on the situation, so I'm sure it isn't a problem. Just remember, you can't lose your house for not paying a credit card bill, you can lose it for not paying a mortgage or re-fi.

I've seen some good people fall into that trap.