Sunday, July 5, 2009

#40 Pay Bills/Bank Online

There are several advantages to paying your bills online. First you eliminate the excess paper waste, which helps preserve forests and limits the resources needed to recycle the paper. Second the production to produce stamps & the adhesive used on the stamps is limited and thirdly, the transportation of your bill to you and your payment to them is eliminated which will help reduce carbon emissions. And to make it easier you can even set it up to automatically pay.

So, what do you save? Cost of stamps, cost of envelopes, cost of checks. time spent paying bills, transportation to go buy more stamps.

Many big companies offer online bill pay, so check with your company. And some even offer incentives if you sign up. Some will offer those incentives to you, others you may have to ask for them. We got some cable channels for free for a year for online bill pay. Also, check with your bank about their online bill pay. Some banks it may be free and some may charge. Our bank charges, unless you have a specific type of account. I asked how we got a “membership banking” account and it turns out we just had to work for one of the companies that was a “member” and at one point the parent-company of the company my husband worked for was a “member” and we got membership banking on all our accounts and now have free bill pay. It saves us about $6 a month and I rarely have to buy stamps, envelopes or checks anymore.

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