Automatic withdrawals

Do you have any bills that are set up to be automatically debited from your bank account? Do you prefer it that way, or would you rather send pay manually?

We do for a few things like our car insurance.

will NEVER do that again... in NJ you are authorizing the transaction, not necessarily the amount. Therefore if you authorize a company to deduct the monthly minimum payment, they may have the right to change your minimum payment... so what you thought was $100, could actually be $300 within a few months... that is a big difference when living pay check to paycheck.

I had a situation with BOA where i paid $50 per month in insurance in case i was ever hospitalized, out of work, etc.... i wound up in the hospital for months, and my automatic payments were deducted. The insurance never paid claiming that the fine print said the balance on the card would have to be a certain amount or the insurance would not pay. Even though i tried to cancel the auto pay... BOA would not allow me to do so. Because i was not working, there was no money in the account and i started bouncing the auto pay every day for months til i could straighten it out.

The accounts we do that with don't vary month to month, i.e. there is no minimum. What we owe is what gets deducted. But, that's useful information and once more proof that the large print giveth and the small print taketh away.

Some are automatically deducted. Don't really have a preference. Its more convenient to set up that automatic withdrawal when you're working steadily and keeping a surplus of money in your account. It only becomes a problem when money runs low and you wind up overdraft.

Right now just pay manually I don't trust the auto deductions just yet.

Tony Marino wrote:Right now just pay manually I don't trust the auto deductions just yet.

I don't trust them either. The only bill I have set up that automatically deducts money from my account is my gym membership and that has at times been irritating when they arbitrarily take out money on a certain specified date when it might not be convenient. The only reason it's set up like that is because that's just how they set up memberships. I don't like it.

Right now, just the gym. That's the only way they will do it.

Yeah, the gym too. And the storage space we rent.

My car insurance. Which is funny because I don't even recall setting it up like that. I usually paid it online but when I went into my account one day, I saw that I inadvertently hit the recurring payment account button and they started taking it out. I don't have a problem with it, it's okay.......for now. When I decide to stop it and if they still take it out, I'll just cancel the debit card. In general, I prefer to pay my bills manually.

Agree with Tony that automatic deductions tend to cause trouble because it often seems like they're taking more money out than what was agreed upon.

Naw, I pay manually.

If every company did it like GEICO, there might not be the problems some of you mentioned. Every month I get an email (about 10 days out) reminding me that their about to debit my account on the due date for the exact amount I have set up. There's even a button to click if I need to postpone/adjust the payment. I've never had to do that so I don't know what's involoved but it seems very straight forward to me.