Get Your Bills Together by Eliminating Them? Save Some Trees, and Go Paperless!

If you're more than about twenty years old then you remember the days before online banking. When you had to tediously mark out every transaction by hand in your bank register to keep track of your spending. Thank goodness I don't have to do that! It's easy to get your act together with paperless billing.

Now a days online banking is a beautiful thing, and it can be a real lifesaver. Especially for those who have aging parents or grandparents that need a little extra help financially.

It's always a little hard convincing older people to let you lend them a hand. They're uncomfortable about losing their independence which is very understandable. You do get to a point where you just plain are not as sharp as you used to be though. Paperless billing, and recurring payments may be a good way to help out your family members without stealing their dignity from them.

My mother, and grandmother were not always on top of things their health being what it was. So, I enrolled all of their bills in online banking. I would get an e-mail bill every month, and could keep track of things to make sure they were all paid.

It's much better than having to sort through somebody else's desk, and hunt for paperwork! Pretty much every major company has an online payment solution so you can monitor all of these from the comfort of your kitchen even if you live a good few miles away from your parents.

You can even automatically pay a good amount of billers that do not have an online option. Usually any major bank will offer you some type of 'online bill pay' technique, and you can send checks electronically to a business by inputting their information.

The only thing to be wary of is to make sure of is that there are funds to cover the bills. An automatic bill will withdraw on time every month even if there's no money in the account. It won't wait two days for funds to be available like you do! Make sure your bills don't post before your checks have cleared.

You may also want to check from time to time to monitor for clerical errors. Make sure you're getting charged the right amount just like you did with your paper bills. Errors fly under the radar all the time, and they tend to be in the biller's favor most of the time. Catch them early, and dispute them with the provider.

If you don't like the idea of money automatically being drained from your account you can also go with an e-mail bill instead of a recurring payment. This will send you your bill online, and you'll be alerted in your inbox. However, this is not a payment, and will not be removed from your account.

You'll have to do that manually. I enjoy this method, because I like to look over all of my bills before I hand over any money. If my bill is drastically different than the month before for no reason then my providers can expect to hear from me shortly, and before any payment is rendered. Plus, you'll also save a few trees.