I've been trying to figure out a way to make paying bills easier. It's not that paying bills is difficult per se, but I think it's more tedious than it should be...
Consider the following difficulties:
1) We get paid bi-weekly, but billed monthly... Thus, throughout the year, we constantly have to adjust for which bills get paid with which paycheck
2) Some bills vary in amount by nature (electric, water, etc)
3) Auto-payments tend to have some thorns... For example, some companies process on the due date, some on the statement date... Only a few let you actually pick a date. (One company (AT&T) simply didn't process my auto-payment.)
4) In the event of an egregious billing error, auto-payments can really jack things up
5) Manual payments - at best - require you to remember (or set a calendar reminder, etc) for a due date, or require, well... manual activity
Consider the following opportunities:
1) Credit card rewards - getting even just 1% back on all (or most) bills can add up to a nice Holiday bonus (for us, easily $85+ per year. YMMV of course)
2) The consumer protections of credit cards vs. direct banking - If there's a dispute, I'd rather work with a credit card.
3) The "promise" of auto-pay - rest assured everything is always paid, so you can focus on other stuff... like life
4) Paying a bill with a credit card theoretically lengthens the due date by 30 - 60 days - if you hit a rough patch, and have the available credit limit, you can float some bills for months without any risk of delenquency (making minimum payments, of course).
So here are my goals:
1) Simplify paying bills - All bills always paid, and all I have to do is check once or twice per month
2) Max out credit card rewards - Even just 1% back on all utilities, again, is a nice bonus
3) Max out my FICO score consistently by reporting the perfect balances all the time, every time (a nice cherry on top)
WIth that, I begin my journey.
Step 1: Figure out when every bill issues a statement and when it becomes due
Step 2: Figure out when every bill processes their auto-payment (This can take the longest)
Step 3: Figure out when every credit card issues a statement and becomes due
Step 4: Put all of this in a list for each calendar day of the month:
1 -
2 - Water Due ($50), Capital 1 Statement
3 - MyFICO auto-payment processes (~$15)
4 -
...
26 - Exclusive Cheese of the Month Auto-Payment processes ($650,000)
27 -
28 -
(29) - (probably best to avoid the 29th - 31st if possible)
(30) -
(31) -
At the end of the day, all you care about is:
1) When each bill processes auto-payment
2) When each credit card cuts a statement
Step 5: Line up each auto-payment to each credit card. Ideally, an auto-payment processes about 5 days after a card's statement date. The reason is it gives you the longest amount of time to pay that card before the next statement date.
Step 6: Move dates around: This is probably the most critical step. Basically, you're moving your card statement dates and/or your auto-pay processing dates to accomodate each other. Some accounts will be easier than others.
Step 7: Monitor and correct as needed
END RESULT ((theoretical):
Alll you have to do is log into the credit card(s) in question an PIF a day or two before your statement date.
- All of you bills are paid
- Your cards will not accrue any interest
- Your cards will report PIF
There may be more to it than that, but that's my plan. I've already gone through steps 1-6, and currently on step 7. Any feedback/thoughts/suggestions are absolutely appreciated. I'll report back periodically as the results come in 
@Anonymous wrote:
26 - Exclusive Cheese of the Month Auto-Payment processes ($650,000)
Who cut the cheese with a $650k monthly membership fee? 
Ok, I couldn't resist. That was cheesy wasn't it?
It's always fun juggling multiple payments at different times of the month. And with a bi-monthly pay schedule, it can be a challeng because 100% of your monthly income isn't there, with the exception of two months out of the year.
I used to do the same as you, but I decided tweak it all a year or two ago. I also get paid irregularly and sometimes only once per month or once every other month. I decided to use my CCs as a float for some of those charges vs. worrying about tapping into savings. Add to that utilities, insurances, 2 loan payments, subscriptions to places like myFICO, biz services, cell, dues, etc., including 25 CCs, it was tough to juggle. Then I tried auto draft and bill pay, but that hasn't been 100% reliable. What I do now is put 100% of my charges on Amex which forces me to PIF. And to keep CCs active, I'll use every quarter or so on a cup of coffee somewhere.
EDIT: IIlecs, I forgot to thank you for your response above. I'm basically doing the same thing, but with Auto-pay on a revolver instead of an Amex.
So I've been on this for a little under a month now, tracking every account, every balance (to the penny), and exact payment/statement/posting dates for everything. Some observations, some of which might be "duhs" to many of you:
1) Most payments take 2-4 days to post (pushing or pulling)
2) One installment account would post a payment (pushed), show the payment status as "processed," but it did not update the balance until the following day. I'll have to do the math to see if interest was charged for that day!
3) Statements don't cut for a few days until after the statement date, I assume to catch any pending transactions. Should be able to capture when they post to the CRAs.
4) A "good" statement will clearly indicate the exact day your card will be charged
5) Some transactions post dates that are not the actual transaction date (I attribute this to whenever the merchant settles their batch). Sounds kind of... Illegal somehow? *
Long and short, it's really difficult to track an actual real daily balance of an account... I wonder how much of it is just "that's how the process works" and how much is intentional shenanigans.
Perhaps I'm paranoid, I just thought it would be easier...
(EDIT: The cheese club was purely to see if anyone was paying attention )
( * EDIT 2: Investigating this... I can't seem to find an example currently)
@MattH wrote:
One of my little tricks is, when it happens that my balance due to a regular creditor is zero, I make a 5 dollar payment to them (usually you cannot pull from the creditor side if there is no balance, but you can always push from the checking account side). This just means I have a credit balance on that card until I use it to buy something. You may wonder, what's the purpose? The purpose is, to make it very simple to check whether I am current with all my creditors. At least twice a month I go to my bank website Bill Pay activity summary, and sort the list of creditors by date of most recent payment. Since I pay SOMETHING on every card every month even when there is no balance due, then I can instantly see if there's an account that I have not yet paid this month.
Side question, does that negative balance ever report to CRAs? If so, could have a very interesting effect on Util
They always report small credit balances as zero.
@Anonymous wrote:
@MattH wrote:
One of my little tricks is, when it happens that my balance due to a regular creditor is zero, I make a 5 dollar payment to them (usually you cannot pull from the creditor side if there is no balance, but you can always push from the checking account side). This just means I have a credit balance on that card until I use it to buy something. You may wonder, what's the purpose? The purpose is, to make it very simple to check whether I am current with all my creditors. At least twice a month I go to my bank website Bill Pay activity summary, and sort the list of creditors by date of most recent payment. Since I pay SOMETHING on every card every month even when there is no balance due, then I can instantly see if there's an account that I have not yet paid this month.Side question, does that negative balance ever report to CRAs? If so, could have a very interesting effect on Util
When cash flow was tighter I sometimes had to wait for a paycheck before paying some of my bills. In such cases, I would send a check for the minimum payment right away, so that if the larger payment arrived a little after the due date I wouldn't get dinged with a late fee. Credit card companies love late fees. I don't.