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I don't trust automatic payments, period. I'm like you...I feel more comfortable making payments knowing that the money is in the account, and I'm controlling it, not some computer program.
I've had glitches here and there with monies being debited in error by the bank, and had the automatic payments been in place, I would've had one hell of a mess. A returned payment to a creditor (a credit card company, for instance) can jack your rate to the default rate. The CCC won't care that your $14.95 check to somebody else was processed by your bank as $1495.00, they just know that your payment (made to them on the due date, automatically) bounced. Nobody needs that.
I don't know if disposable income has anything to do with it. You work with what you've got, whatever it is. But it'd be nice to have an account you could draw on that had enough cash in it that you could set up automatic payments from it forever, without having to look at the balance.
When you get to that point, give me a shout...I'll be your new best friend!
Edit to add: BTW, I've always thought that the automatic payments thing was just another ploy by the banks to complicate our lives, not to make life easier like they advertise. The more things you don't have to remember to do, the more things you will forget to do. The banks' reward comes from the overdraft fees, the bounced payment ratejacks and late fees, or both. And they've got the perfect excuse for when it happens to you, because you set this stuff up yourself, so of course, it's entirely your fault, right?
Be very careful when banks try to "help" you in your life. They're almost as bad as the government.
@haulingthescoreup wrote:
I'm one of the few dinosaurs still treading this earth who keeps an old-fashioned check register. I only write 4 or 5 checks a year, but I record all my debit card use, ATM w/d's, online orders, and online bill pays in the register. I confirm it daily (yes, daily) with my online bank account.
And I never, ever believe what the phone or ATM machine says my balance is.
+1
We've been burned by automatic bill payments drawing from checking accounts - and have spent months getting it straightened out. At this point, the only automatic bill payments I'm willing to set up are on my cc's.
Unlike using my checking account, if there's an error on my cc, I have time to get it straightened out--and there is no possibility of overdraft fees. No possibility of overlimit fees, either, as my bills never come close to maxing out the cc.
Maybe some other posters have had this work for them.
I don't do any automatic payments to my CC's from my checking account - those I do the good old fashioned way (but I do them twice a month). And, unfortunately, like Hauling, I'm checking that bank account daily.
haulingthescoreup wrote:
I'm one of the few dinosaurs still treading this earth who keeps an old-fashioned check register. I only write 4 or 5 checks a year, but I record all my debit card use, ATM w/d's, online orders, and online bill pays in the register. I confirm it daily (yes, daily) with my online bank account.
And I never, ever believe what the phone or ATM machine says my balance is.
+ 2