Simple Savings: Pay bills online.
How many of you pay bills online? In today’s digital age, I would assume that many of us do. If you don’t already, today’s savings tip is do just that. Pay your bills online.
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You still have to pay your bills. Sorry. You can’t save here! Bills are an unfortunate fact of life. Along with that, remember to pay your bills on time so you don’t have any late fees added onto your bills.
I advocate saving on your bills by saving on postage. Stamps currently (as of October 2014) cost $0.49. For each bill that you pay by mail, you are spending $5.88 over the course of the year in postage to mail in your monthly payments. The flip side is to look at what you could be saving. For each bill that you pay online, you are saving $5.88 over the course of the year. Who wouldn’t like an extra $5 to add to their wallet? Multiply the number of companies you pay online by $5.88 and the savings really accumulates! I’ve started walking our small town water bill to town hall so that’s one bill on which we’re already saving!
I challenge you to look through all your bills and see how many of them you can pay online. Go ahead and set up online bill payments today if you are so inclined. If you are already paying bills online, add up how much you are saving on postage and give yourself a pat on the back!
I recently changed some bills to either a credit card, or directly taken from our checking account. This works great when we are out of state. I still get the paper bill, but it tells me what the amount is for, and I put it with the credit card bills for subtract the bill from our checking account when I get it. These are both free, but you have to watch it because some bills charge you if they are put on a credit card.
Very true! We’ve noticed that as well. Charging it (and then paying it off, of course) would be the simplest way, but some bills do charge extra, probably because most people don’t pay their credit card bills promptly.
I agree with this one! Our city doesn’t offer online billing so that’s the only stamp I’m sending for bills each month (water & sewer). I stopped by the post office this morning and picked up 3 books of stamps…and it came out to be almost $30!!
Same with our small town (1000 people), so I walk the bill either to our the local bank or our town hall. It’s just a couple blocks from our home, gets me a bit of exercise and saves me a stamp. Postage prices really are increasing!