I got my credit card statement recently, and was very disturbed to see that I was charged late payment fee and the interest rate jumped from 8.99% to 18.99%. My first thought was that I did not receive my bill and therefore forgot to pay it. Guess what, I know that I do not have a very good system that guards me from missing paying my bill, and there is such fear somewhere in the back of my mind that I may pay my bill late. I was on my way out taking my kids to the park, so I decided to not to worry about it for a couple of hours.

After we got home, I asked my husband-he is the primary card holder- to call American Express to ask for a one-time forgiveness since we have been paying our cards off every month on time. A disturbed mind can’t think straight. Before he called, I looked at my file, and saw the previous bill marked as paid. I asked myself “Was I so out of my mind that I forgot to hit the ‘submit’ button when I paid the bill online?” I went online and having some trouble to logon to my bank, as you can tell that I was under some stress to have not paid my bill on time. It’s quite a punishment that credit card companies do such practice now that if you pay your bill late just once they charge you late fee and bump up your interest rate. It was not like this before, my husband told me that he used to pay his bills late now and then, but they never changed his interest rate.

After I was finally able to logon, I looked up the payee, and almost concluded that I did not pay that bill, but I looked at my screen for a little longer and saw what happened was that I mistakenly paid another American Express card, so one card I paid twice last month, while the other card received no payment. After I sorted things out, Michael called and corrected the mistake.

Set up Auto Bill Pay with my bank

I decided to learn and to benefit from this lesson. I decided to root out the fear of paying my bills late, the fear that I have been ignoring. Do you have such fear? Do you have a system in place that prevents you from missing to pay any single bill? If you don’t have such system, then there is fear somewhere hidden within you. I decided to set up Auto Bill Pay with my bank. Do not set up Auto Bill Pay with your creditors directly. –That’s one thing I learned in the past:

About 6 years ago, we moved from another city and called our telephone company at that time, AT&T, about moving our service. We were not able to keep the same number because of relocating to a different city even though they have the same area code. Two months after our move, I discovered from our bank statement that AT&T was automatically deducting money for the old phone number as well as for the new one. One more reason I don’t like AT&T.

If you set up auto bill pay directly with your creditors, you give them permission to deduct money from your account or to charge your credit card, and if you need to make changes, you can’t do it yourself, you have to call them and follow their rules.

Not all banks created equal

First of all you need to set up online banking if you have not done so. Then check out the options your bank offers you regarding paying bills. We use Salemfive Bank as our main checking account, they give you these options: receive ebills from your creditors, automatic pay the minimum or full balance if the balance is under certain amount set by you, send email notification when ebills received, set recurring payment. Not all banks offer all these features. I set up automatic paying full balance on most of our credit cards if the balance is under $1000, and paying recurring payment on one card that we are carrying balance at 0% interest rate.

If your bank do not offer the features you like to use, you can search for another bank that gives you great online banking features and high-yield interest rate. If you do use different banks, it’s very useful if at least one of your banks offers bank to bank online transfer.

I’m very glad that I finally set up auto bill pay. This little incident was a little push that I needed.

Other posts from other bloggers you may enjoy:

•Focus on prosperity-by Stephen Martile. Set up automatic system to pay your bills so that you no longer focus on debt and start to focus on prosperity.

•The connections between mental, physical and financial clutter-by Erin Doland. Set up auto bill pay to unclutter your life.

•Would you make a ten-minutes call for $57?-by J.D. A similar credit card bill incident like mine. He stresses the importance of calling your credit card company if you have been a good customer and just accidentally didn’t pay your bill once.

Related Post:

•A simple way to manage and master money-the Jars system