Tell us what's happened to you recently (that's interesting)

I pay all my major bills, mortgage, car payments, school tuitions, insurance, etc. through automatic withdraw. I even set up a completely separate checking account at my bank (since it was free) for autopayments and have specific amounts deposited to it from both my and my wife’s paychecks. The deposits and bills simply take care of themselves, and my credit rating skyrocketed after only a couple of years of doing this.

However, I will ALWAYS pay my electric, phone, cable and certain other bills by check (mail) or one-shot online payments (no saved account info). The reason is that those particular vendors are far more apt to screw up and either over charge me or screw up my bill from month to month. I’ve learned from hard experience that it is next to impossible to actually get money returned from such vendors even when THEY screw up, they just want to “credit your account”, which often leads to even more billing shenanigans down the road. It’s far easier to receive the bill, review it, decide it’s correct, then hop online and pay it or mail a check than it is to spend hours on the phone explaining to the CSRs in the Philippines how you were over-charged.

I’m in complete agreement. One missed decimal can REALLY mess things up, we’re entrusting those we owe to legitimately handle the correct billed amount. Because of that, I move everything out of the account I use for it except a rough monthly average of my auto-bills. If a mistake is made, i would get notifications for hitting my limit there very quickly.

I probably need to start doing automatic payments. I got a call from my mortgage lender the other day asking politely if I had made my payment, and I’m thinking well of course I did but then I check and whoops, no I didn’t. Totally whiffed this month. I’m losin’ it.

I’ve been auto-paying all my bills for many years and have never had a biller make a mistake.

No-body has a permission to auto pull from my account. I either push it or they pull from the credit card. This presents a challenge for something that varies like… a power bill.

Of all things, I had a (former) credit card company over-bill me, once. Still, better safe than sorry. I also write checks out of that bill pay environment, so I’d rather put a check on myself as well. If I fat finger something I type in, that’s still bad.

I find that I forget about autopaid deductions from my account far more than I forget to pay bills, which can have awkward moments when I think I have spending money and don’t. (Though really I should just get around to budgeting.) So I dislike autopay and avoid it whenever possible.

That said, several years ago when I was still living in the basement of my parents’ house (but they had moved to Germany), I was responsible for paying the bills with a contribution from the renters in the rest of the house. We noticed nobody had picked up our trash in a while and it was starting to be an issue. Turned out I had forgotten to pay the trash bill and they never once contacted me or reminded me about it or even sent a notice of service suspension. If they had, I would have paid immediately. The deal turned out to be that even though I was the one paying the bill, it was in the name of a friend of my parents who was managing the property, and they only contacted him - nor would they let me take over.

Puerto Penasco looks amazing. Good luck on the property hunt, and enjoy your forthcoming retirement!

We need a retirement plans thread. I’m still probably 15-20 years away, as I am 48 with one kid adulting (college grad & married), one who is a college freshman and one who is a high school freshman, so I have a minimum of 8 more years of school costs ahead of me. I haven’t given much thought to where I will retire, only that it won’t be here (Cincinnati, OH).

I won’t head north at all. Cincinnati literally lies just below the line where you cross over from occasional 1-day crippling snow events a couple of times per winter to multiple snowpocalypse events every winter (I’m looking at you Columbus and Cleveland). I really like Virginia, especially around Richmond and the greater D.C. area, but it’s far too expensive. My family has property on the coast in Tampa, and over the years I have really come to like the greater Tampa Bay and St. Pete area. I could probably retire happily down there, buy a house inland where costs are more reasonable, and then just hit the beach whenever I like. The heat is a killer, but Tampa/St. Pete don’t seem as bad as say Orlando, which feels like Hell on Earth every time I am there in the summer for my daughter’s volleyball nationals.

I’m pretty much in this same boat, although I only have true auto-pay set up for the real essentials - electricity, other utilities via condo association. The rest I have set up to send me a reminder a week or 10 days ahead of the due date each month, and then I go to their web site myself and make the payment. That way I catch it if the number seems incredibly weird before the payment is made.

I have auto-pay set up for some things, but I also maintain a spreadsheet with all my monthly payments listed, and I open it on the first or second day of each month and go through and make all my payments from that month’s paycheck. That way I don’t worry about the auto-pays working or not. All the bills should be at $0 before they try to pull.

Belt and suspenders I guess.

Gracias, senor.

It’s like you’re already a native! ;-)

I’ve an interesting week, in the old Chinese saying sense, with two major occurrences.

First, I went over to my cousin’s place and met up with my parents while they were doing a family visit tour. While there, I went out for a run in a very nice area around Elgin IL…and stepped in a hole, breaking a bone in my foot. So now I get to spend some quality time with this lovely thing:

Google Photos

At least 2 months. Got an appt with a specialist next week to determine if it’ll be longer, or need surgery, or what. Not going to be dong much moving around for a while. On the bright side, I can still drink beer.

Second, I got up this morning to the sound of rain. Looked out my bedroom window…no rain. Sun just coming up, few clouds…huh? So I went over to the porch area of my condo, and lo and behold, there’s a waterfall coming out of the ceiling right by the utility closet where the water heater resides. It’s not coming from my pipes or water heater, fortunately, but it looks like the condo upstairs sprung a leak. No answer knocking on that door, so I called the maintenance people and they’re going to try to track down the owner and get the water shut off before any serious damage happens. If I’d happened to be gone today, it could have gotten seriously ugly.

Hopefully I can get through the rest of today without anything else happening…bring on next week!

What a horrible week! Make sure they take full care of any moisture and dry everything out extremely well. Don’t want any mold, especially black mold growing.

Cleaned my car, inside and out. The last time I cleaned my car (not the same car) like this was over 9 years ago before going on a date with my now ex. I posted feeling down about two months ago after we split up. Got a lot of supportive PMs, thanks! So far we’ve been smart about the whole thing, a little bit of drama but things are progressing very nicely.
If you haven’t guessed already why I’m posting about making my car presentable, I’m going on a date and I can now at least offer a ride in good conscience if it comes to that.

Thinking about relocating to the Virgin Islands or Puerto Rico for a few years. I’d get save pay and it would be nice up work less.

Good news on this one, it was just a leaky hose. The lady upstairs got it fixed fairly quickly, so the damage was limited. She’ll still have to get someone out to look at the water damage to her utility closet and mine, but it could have been a lot worse.

Congrats, best of luck! Hope it works out well, and if not, remember that dating is an endurance sport.

Thanks, we talked for almost three hours. She’s cool, we’ll have to see if about another date. If so that’s cool if not that’s fine also, I’m in no hurry. I had a good time.

Sounds like a great date, man. No rush for anything right? Hopefully you to can hang out again. I usually leave things like that, with an easy going, ‘let’s do this again,’ thing.

I hate early dating when you’re both posturing a bit to feel the other person out, so when you really bond and talk with someone that long it is a good sign.

Fingers crossed for you, Fortitudo.

For me, boat day today, trying to enjoy what’s left of the nice weather before fall. If I could take you all out with me, I would.

Cheers, QT3!

Sweet, I used to have a boat, a nice 27 foot sailboat I bought with a buddy. Then I had kids and didn’t have any more time for stuff like that. One day, though.