Moneyanatomy - personal finance blog

Showing posts with label emergency preparation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label emergency preparation. Show all posts

Friday, October 27, 2017

Autopay - when is it useful?

As part of preparation for some of the adverse life events (such as death or incapacitation) I posted an article with a plan which describes the preparation steps.

Liabilities is one of the categories on that plan.

 




It is useful to have a list with all bills and corresponding payment information so if necessary, the family members can find out easily which bills are payed when and how. 

Here are some examples: 
List of all credit cards 
Electricity
Security
Internet services
Cell phone
Cable/Netflix
Car insurance
Any other services you subscribe to 

I am using a list like this one:




Almost all of my bills are on autopay. They are paid automatically either from a checking account or from a credit card. The credit cards themselves are also on autopay. 

This autopay option is great to have when we go on vacation - no need to worry about  bills becoming overdue

And autopay should provide you time in case you will have to reorganize the payments after an event.

Almost all my bills are on autopay to a credit card (which gives 1% back on anything). I have one particular credit card which I use for bills only. This credit card is kept safely at home. I never take it with me anywhere or use it for anything else. 
I just don't want to go trough the hassle to call up every company on this autopay list in case the number gets stolen. 

When the card is close to the expiration date, it is easy to just get out the list and to update every account on the list with the new credit card expiration date. For those updates I use a list like that:







I usually pick a day in between the due dates, activate my new card and update everything in one day.