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I have all of my bills and almost every single one of our joint bills set up to be paid automatically. Some are automatically charged to my American Express; others are automatically withdrawn from our checking account. This is because I do not like paying bills, and I have a tendency to forget to pay them at all if I don’t do it the instant I receive the bill. My husband also dislikes paying bills. I realize that there are drawbacks to having bills automatically paid, but so far it has worked for us.

However, there are three bills I still have to pay manually. One is for our internet connection — we pay a local provider twice a year, and they mail us a bill. They do not have an auto-pay option, but it’s not a big deal since it only happens twice a year. Another is our car insurance. They also bill us twice a year, but that one I actually choose to pay manually online. Then there’s our monthly water bill. That one comes at the very end of each month, but isn’t due until around the 20th of the following month. Since we don’t normally have the money in our account to pay it until the 15th, I hang on to that one and just have to remember to pay it before it’s due. There have been a lot of near-misses with that one, but I’ve always remembered in time.

Until now. We got our water bill Saturday, and I was shocked at the amount. Then I was further shocked when I realized that the REASON it was so high was because I’d forgotten to pay it last month. Uh, oops. I will have to call them to see if they’re planning to report it as late. I doubt it though, since it’s “only” 18 days late. We also have an eleven cent late fee. We got off easy as far as I’m concerned.

One plus to this is that I discovered that the city finally started offering auto-pay. So I’ll set that up. That will leave us only 2 bills to pay manually and one less thing to worry about.

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