Paying Incoming Bills While Gone For A Summer

[Pat60]

We are planning to spend next summer traveling. I know that online banking is the key to getting bills paid while we are gone but my question is what do you do about bills that come to the house liike electric, phones, cells, insurance, etc. that are not online for viewing and paying.

Credit card accounts can be viewed online so you can pay that easily each month...

You can't have your mail forwarded if you are traveling around the country...

Do I need to call these companies to inform them beforehand that we are planning to be gone and how do I obtain what is due and owing for that month's bill so I can pay it while on the road...

There must be an easy way to do this...

We are used to traveling for a couple of weeks at a time so when we get home we can pay bills that have come in.

Any help and advice would be appreciated. Thank you.

Pat

[wolfe10]

Pat,

Good questions. You are on the right track. There are several options that all work well. On-line bill review and on-line billpay; direct bill drafting; charging bills to your credit card.

I have arranged for all of my utilities to bill directly to my credit card. At least with my utility companies there is no charge to do this -- but be sure to check. My credit card company sends me an e-mail when the statement is generated and I review all of my charges on-line. Just in case I cannot get on-line when the bill is due, I have set up my account to always pay my bill automatically, in full on the due date.

Another option is to have bills automatically drafted against your checking account. This works particularly well if you have the option to "balance bill" your utilities. Balanced billing means you are billed the same amount every month for (generally) a one-year period. Balanced billing makes it easier to budget and determine how much you need in checking to cover basic bills each month. Then, at the end of the calendar year you pay the utility company any overage or they credit any amount due back to you against your next rolling average billing amount.

I have found that insurance (at least State Farm) doesn't automatically bill homeowners or car insurance, but they are very willing to take a credit card over the phone to pay the bill in full. So when quicken reminds me that insurance is due, I call my agent and presto, she bills my credit card. Health insurance we have drafted each month directly from our checking account.

Check with all of your monthly bills. You may be surprised how many (even small) towns now have websites that allow you to review your account on-line.

Regarding mail forwarding. There are a number of very good mail forwarding services. FMCA has a very good one. But, if you only want mail forwarded for three months, check with your local post office. In my experience you have to arrange mail forwarding through the PO entirely in advance of your departure, so you have to know your forwarding addresses in advance, but they do now offer a mail forwarding service. FMCA is a lot more flexible and allows you to call in your address once you know where you are going to be for a week or so.

Whatever combination you choose, get everything set up well in advance of your departure. It is much easier to relax and have a good time when you know bills are on autopilot. I've been doing this for over 10 years while we travel all over the world.

Have fun,

Dianne Wolfe

[Guest Wayne77590]

I use two methods.

For the long term bills like the utilities bills, I use the direct draft approach.

For the, what i think will be short term bills I use the credit card with automatic withdrawals.

Both are fairl easy to set up. Mainly I use only one credit card that pays me back $1 on every $100 spend. At lest I "feel" like I'm getting something back. Since most of of travel, and should not be carrying a lot of cash, I would guess that we all use credit or debit cards while on the road.

Since we are on the road, and we use the card for our supplies, I randomly check my on-line statements to make sure no hanky-banky (hee) is going on. We have not had any problems, so far.

Just remember, that if your bank or credit card company decides to change your account, you will have to notify all of those you pay of your new routing number or credit card number. My son had a storage unit auctioned off when he received a new credit card and forgot to notify the storage company. Long story.

You can also set up a recurring payment using the on-line bill payer. Lot's of options, you just have to choose which is right for you. I was flabbergasted the other day when I was in line at Walmart and the lady in front of me wrote a check. ???? I have not seen that done in years out in the stores.

[tbutler]

Pat,

I'll add a few things to what has been said above. We have been doing all this with no problem for eight years now. During that time, things have gotten much easier with the almost universal use of the internet by companies for bill paying. All the companies I deal with have on-line billing and automatic payments available. Cell phones, satellite TV, internet service provider and credit cards are all anxious to have you go green and do on-line billing. They save huge amounts of money by not having to mail a bill to you. I simply look up the bill, verify the services being billed and then record the amount of the payment in Quicken.

Many banks and credit unions offer bill paying service where you authorize them to pay certain bills for you each month. The payments are authorized by you and the bank transfers the money electronically. This eliminates the delay of mailing in a bill. So you could still receive the bill by mail forwarded to you and then authorize the bank to pay. I used this for companies that weren't set up for electronic payments from individuals for years before we went full time in the motor home. It works well with the water company, other utilities, mortgage payments, etc. if these companies don't have the ability to accept electronic payments.

We use direct payment authorizations to a credit card or by bank draft for all the regular payments like health insurance, car/home/RV insurance, and other payments that don't vary from month to month. On my computer calendar I have a record of when statements are due so I can check them as soon as a payment period closes and then I can authorize payments like credit cards as soon as I get the statement. All my CC companies allow scheduling payments so I schedule the payment as soon as I have the statement on-line. If I don't get internet service for a week, I don't have to worry about paying a bill on a given day, I have the payment already authorized to be paid on the due date. They don't get the money early, I don't have to take it out of my account until their due date. All I have to do is check statements to make sure everything is paid as expected. I don't even have to wait for statements to see this, I can check current activity at any time on all our credit card and bank accounts. Finally, if you aren't using Quicken or a similar accounting program to track your accounts, I strongly recommend you begin doing this. There is no better way to get a handle on your finances than to begin tracking all your expenses. It takes some work and there is a learning curve to be overcome. It will seem incredibly difficult to begin with but once you get the hang of it, it gives you incredible power to manage your finances. You can post each payment you schedule and see how it affects your cash flow before the bill is actually paid.

Brent mentions mailing services. There are numerous companies that can do this for you. You'll find a few advertising in Family Motor Coaching. In the case of a summer's travel, you could have the US Post Office forward your mail to your mail forwarder then let the mail forwarding service know where to send your mail when you want it. We have our mail sent every week unless we are in Canada or some other place where forwarding might become more complex. In that case we just have them hold the mail until we reach a place in the US again. A tip we got years ago was to have the mail sent to: Our Names, General Delivery, Florida, NY 10921 (for example). The receiving PO will hold that mail until you walk into the post office and show identification and request the package of mail. Pick a small town for this as large post offices often have to search among a large pile of general delivery mail. In large towns there may be multiple PO's but there will be only one that handles general delivery mail. You could end up chasing all over a city to find the post office that has your mail. So we always go for a small town for our mail. We sometimes pick a town along our route rather than one where we will be staying. We always allow an extra day or two to be sure the mail is there when we call for it. We pay to have our mail sent via Priority Mail (2 to 3 day delivery in most cases) to be certain of the delivery schedule to expect. This helps us plan the pick up.

Now here is a catch for you with the mail forwarding. The US Post Office forwarding is very slow so the mail that is addressed to your house may take a week or more to get from your home PO to you mail forwarder. They will in turn accumulate that mail until you call them to request delivery to a certain post office. You could pick up your mail to find letters and bills that are two or three weeks old. Being full time RV'ers, we don't have this problem because all our correspondents send our mail directly to our mail forwarding service. Our address is their address with a PMB number (like an apartment number) added. So we don't have the US PO delay in our delivery schedule. Our mail arrives at our mail forwarding service and sits there only until we give them a forwarding address. Under normal circumstances this will be at most a week plus the 2 or 3 days for Priority Mail.

You won't want to have everyone change your mailing address for a temporary (summer) period. As a result, a simpler solution may be to have a relative, friend or a trustworthy neighbor collect your mail from your mail box and do the forwarding thing for you. You can call them or e-mail them with instructions on where to send the mail. Pick up some Priority Mail flat rate envelopes and give them to the person who will do this for you. Put your home return address on the envelopes so that if you miss a pick up somewhere it will be returned to your home. Make it as easy for them to get the job done as you possibly can. Discuss with them before hand what your plan is and let them know how you will advise them of where to forward the mail. Stress the importance of being able to count on when the mail is sent so you can plan where you pick up the mail. If they delay two or three days in getting the mail to their PO, you may end up waiting several days for your forwarded mail arrive. Also, when thinking of your schedule and planning your mail pick up be sure to include holidays in your planning. A holiday can delay mail deliveries for a day or two beyond the normal pattern.

No matter who you use for your forwarding service, you should be able to tell them to forward only certain kinds of mail. For instance if you use a friend or neighbor, they could simply store all the magazines, catalogs and junk mail so you don't have to pay to ship this to you each week. You'll be able to use smaller envelopes and save mailing expenses.

Plan the PO where you want to get your mail by going to www.usps.gov/ where you will find a tab at the top labeled "Locate a Post Office". Put in the name of the town and state and you'll get a selection of PO's in and near the town you requested. That is how you get the zip code. You'll also get hours of operation, a map and/or directions to the PO and a phone number (they won't tell you if your mail is waiting for you). By the way, the PO should hold General Delivery mail for two or three weeks before returning it if not picked up.

Using our mail forwarding service we have had only a handful of problems in our eight years on the road. Enjoy the planning and good travels!

[seajaycecil@yahoo.com]

Willa and I do it the easy way. We put everything we can on ''automatic draft''. The rest of the bills I simply have my sister-in-law pay for us. We leave her the check book with ''power of attorney'' for our bills and a loaded shotgun for security on our house. She lives right next door and would just love to see a burglar up at our house. We also leave her the key to the safety deposit box and if Willa and I should ''get smacked'' she has instructions to distribute funds as per instructions in the ''box''. Willa can check our credit card balances and our bank balance on the road and we use the ''plastic money'' where we can.

Seajay the sailor man