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arthurjj

The title of this article is accurate but it's pretty bad advice. For HN crowd you can get 90% of the benefit from

1. pay off CC debts

2. Set bill pay AND investment to auto. Invest in index funds

3. max out 401k

4. Google FI/RE movement if you want to be fancy.

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Personally I never set up auto pay. Why? Because it hits a little harder (and you pay more attention) when you're actually typing it in every month.

Sure, there's a risk I might miss a payment and get dinged, but you're guarding against Comcast quietly raising your bill $25/mo, or not realizing how much you're truly spending on your credit card every month. Otherwise I agree with the list.

May I suggest auto pay with notifications? I’m a forgetful person, so this lets me avoid late charges while keeping me up to date on my payments. Most banks will let you set a threshold for transactions, above which it will send you an email or SMS alert.

Once you have eight different things you need to pay a month it becomes way too time consuming to manually pay bills. Easier to just set up a mint account and check your finances once a month.

I'm calling BS, I have more than 20 credit cards, a mortgage, and utilities and I don't find it time consuming to manually pay everything (and my mortgage has no escrow)

I call bs on the fact that you don’t think manually paying 20 bills every month is time consuming. Set a timer next time then multiply to see how much of your life you are going to waste doing that.

Should have clarified I meant regular recurring priced bills power/water/internet/phone/investing.

I definitely missed it when Verizon upped my bill by $10 a month. But on the other hand I've never had a late fee and I get an hour back a month. So on net I'm positive money and time ymmv.

Also, in adverse circumstances, harm can pile up faster and higher if you have your bills set to auto-pay. In the US, banks typically charge an overdraft fee for every transaction that overdraws an account, so unless you keep a generous liquid cushion in your checking account, one mistake on anyone's part (perhaps yours, or ACH, or your payee's autopay sytem, or your employer's payroll, or your other bank, or the person who stole your debit card) could put you hundreds of dollars in the hole.

To avoid this, you need to know that you have enough at the correct time in the correct place, and if you're doing that, you might as well click through each payment yourself.

If you're in a tough spot, this also gives you the option to make partial payments against credit cards and incur some interest, which is almost universally a smarter choice than incurring an overdraft charge against your bank account.

Auto-pay system here in Norway doesn't allow overdrafts. Instead I get an email saying payment couldn't be done due to lack of funds.

Number One Rule:

Don't use aws with a credit card you are responsible for.

haha, i see.spoken from experience.

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