Online Bill Pay Your Way to a Four Hour Work Week

My cheap friend at work thinks I’m crazy to pay a monthly fee for an online bill pay service.  I’m pretty tight with money so when I call him cheap that’s really saying something.

He’s thinks it’s even crazier still that I pay $20 annually to have them mail me a CD that contains all of my bills for the year.  He has a whole system of bill filling, paying, and spreadsheet tracking that he uses instead of paying for a service like mine.  Of course, he and his wife just had their first kid, we’ll see how long it is before he switches to my easy system : )

Our bill pay service puts all of our bills online.  They scan them in, then shred all of the paper documents so I don’t have to mess with opening and filing the bills. 

These documents, in addition to the ones that are delivered and paid online, are all available through our user account.  Once a year, they’ll send you a CD containing 12 months worth of bills if you’re willing to pay $20 for it.

The benefits are totally worth the amount spent in my opinion.  I just setup payment rules so every bill is automatically paid as long as it’s not over an amount I specified for that payee when I setup the account. 

What I love about the service is that I don’t have to spend any time on it. The service takes care of making the payments for me and I don’t have to do any kind of tracking or data entry, it’s all available via the web interface or annual CD.

Of course, I have to make sure there are funds in our bank account to cover the bills but that’s what direct deposit is for right?  I log into the site once every 2–3 weeks for a few minutes to make sure everything looks good and that’s it.

I can easily access spending summaries by category or payee or pull up bill detail in just a minute or two.  The best part is, I don’t actually have to do any work to make all this information available.  It automates and tracks our bills so I can spend my time enjoying friends or family or pursuing my goals. 

This automation of is one step towards achieving my version of a Four Hour Work Week.

Ben Edwards, the founder of Money Smart Life, saved up enough to buy a Nintendo back when he was 12 years old. When he used the money to buy shares of Wal-Mart stock instead, he knew he wasn't like the other kids... His addiction to personal finance has paid off for his family and now he's helping you to afford the life that you want. Check him out on the web at Google Plus, Twitter and Facebook.

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