In an effort to go out on the road full timing I need to cut down on our paper mail as much as possible. I have been setting up all the bills I possibly can on e-statements. Although I have been paying bills online for a few years, I am now setting them up to auto-pay in full each month. We have most bills that are automatically charged to credit cards each month. This gives us points with the credit cards that we can use for airline vouchers, cash back or other incentives. I had been paying the credit card bills from my on-line bank. Now I have them set up with the individual credit card companies to auto pay from my bank account in full each month.
We received a letter from one of our credit card companies that said our account had been compromised (apparently a data base breach on their part) so they were closing our old account and would send us a new card. This was a HUGE hassle because I had just set up several bills to be paid automatically with this card about 2 months ago and just now was confident everything was taken care of. Now I've had to go back into all those bills and change the credit card information. As usual when you set up payments like that it may take 4-6 weeks to take effect so you have to be SURE the payment is made, or make it manually until the auto pay is set up. Otherwise a bill may slip by without payment leaving you with a late fee as well as finance charges. Not to mention this credit card in particular I had set up to auto pay from my bank each month. In the process of issuing us a new credit card they did not get our auto pay set up and payment was not made. I was on the phone several times with several different people in order to resolve the $50 late fee and finance charge. After several days it was finally resolved and the charges reversed. Boy what a HASSLE!!! I hope this doesn't happen very often!
Other than the above snafu I have notice a big reduction in our mail. I had gone online a few months ago to optoutprescreen.com to sign up for opting out of junk mail.
I do NOT want to get out on the road & have a bill slip by without getting paid and be charged with fees. We plan on having some kind of internet connection but I know we will be staying in places where we may not be able to get a connection or we may just get busy & let something slip by. We're getting one step closer to our dream :)
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