Reminders for your bills that you can’t put on auto-pay
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Automatic bill payment has certainly made our lives easier, but some places still aren’t on board yet. Our county government isn’t the only institution that has a relatively archaic method for collecting taxes and fees, but it’s the big one we deal with. Property taxes, licenses, water bills, dog licenses, etc., cannot be put on auto-pay. Credit cards are accepted, but only with a convenience fee (which is in violation of Visa’s merchant agreement for the rest of us but not for governments). Every tax and every fee has a late fee as early as the first day past due.
What’s more, payment is still expected on time even if they screw up and don’t send us a bill! This is bothersome; not only do I have to remember to pay on time, but I have to remember to check for the bill, too.
Fortunately, the county prints up a schedule of when things are due for the year, all on one sheet. This helps a little bit, since now we know when to start looking for bills. Even if we don’t receive the bills, we can enter reminders in IWantSandy.com to fire off a couple of weeks before the bills are due as a backup. When the reminders arrive in our e-mail, if we haven’t received the bill yet, we’ll know to call up the county to see what’s going on.
I’ve just started to play with IWantSandy and it looks really cool. The e-mail interface is intuitive and easy to use. And, it’s free! (Guys: Just be sure to tell your wife/fiancee/SO about Sandy before they find out on their own.)
9 Responses to “Reminders for your bills that you can’t put on auto-pay”
By thehungrydollar.com on Mar 20, 2008 | Reply
Ha! Good call on telling the guys to let their wife know! Seeing an email from IWantSandy in the inbox could cause some problems! Looks like a really useful tool though. Not to mention it’s free.
By Mrs. Micah on Mar 20, 2008 | Reply
I LOVE Sandy. She’s so handy.
A common phrase in our household is “I’ll get Sandy to remind me.”
By jay on Mar 20, 2008 | Reply
Email reminders are a must for me. Anyone who has Apple’s OSX can use iCal to set up email reminders. You can do this through Yahoo as well.
By tracy ho on Mar 22, 2008 | Reply
Great reminder for us ,
Thanks,
tracy ho
wisdomgettingloaded
By steve on Aug 3, 2008 | Reply
yes, automated email reminders are fantastic. I use Google Calendar to set them up.
By psamuels on Feb 10, 2010 | Reply
I’ve been using billstrust.com as a complete way to not having to remember due dates or paying bills. U can auto pay any bill in essence. It works off paper bills, acknowledging that most people still prefer to get them that way and stick them on the fridge.
Just stick on a qr code sticker that they send out and fax or scan/email the bills away – you get an sms when the bills are paid or can view them all queued up online. Great for people/business wanting to manage cash flow and just to free up time by not having to enter all the bill info and manually pay – but want control of their bills at the same time