Ask Liz Weston

Get smart with your money

bill payments

Q&A: Paying bills with auto payments is scary; should it be?

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Dear Liz: For several reasons you recommend using online services from the bank or credit union to pay bills. I use that method for most of our bills, but not all. Some vendors want us to set up a process where they are able to pull the desired payment directly from our account. Given the regular reports of data breaches at corporations that should know better, I refuse to give them the required permissions. Am I wrong in this?

Answer: The issue is less about potential breaches and more about getting automated payments to stop when you want them to.

Some companies make it easy to sign up for their services and devilishly hard to cancel them. Gym chains are notorious for this. Federal laws protect your right to cancel automatic payments, but you may have to enlist your bank to get the most pernicious companies to stop charging you.

If you have any doubts that your cancellation order would be honored, consider setting up automatic payments using a credit card instead of giving the company direct access to your checking account.

How to Pay Bills When You Can’t Pay Your Bills

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stack-of-billsWhen Bruce McClary was a housing counselor, his clients regularly showed up for appointments with grocery bags full of unopened bills.

“It wasn’t unusual. They couldn’t pay the bills, so they didn’t open them,” says McClary, who now works in public relations for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling.

Ignoring bills seems to work — at least for a while. The repo man typically won’t take your car if you’re a little late with your payment (although he can). Credit card companies and student lenders may start to call, but you can always send them to voicemail. Foreclosures can take months, if not years, depending on where you live.

In my latest for NerdWallet, how to put a plan together when the money you have just isn’t enough.

Q&A: Automatic payments

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Dear Liz: Since I lost my second job, we have fallen behind on our bills. Although we get paid on Friday, by Monday our checking account is in the red even without buying anything.

It’s all going to automatic payments for things like insurance and college savings for our child. I think the bank has a way of processing transactions to maximize our bounce fees. Should we take control and pay manually? Is automatic payment a recipe for disaster?

Answer: In your situation, yes, because you’re spending more than you make. The bank’s fee-maximizing policies aren’t helping matters, but the fundamental problem is that you’re living beyond your means.

Your first step should be to use a refund calculator to see whether you can lower your tax withholding and take home more in your paychecks. Turbotax has one on its site called TaxCaster that’s easy to use. If you’re on track to get a fat refund next year, adjust your withholding so you can get the money now, when you need it. The human resources departments at your jobs can help with this.

Once you have a clear idea of your current income, review your spending to see where you can cut. Those college contributions should be among the first to go. Yes, you want to educate your child, but other expenses — including current bills and retirement savings — must take priority until your income is higher. Slashing expenses may be painful, but it’s necessary to avoid going into debt or incurring unnecessary bank fees.

You can call the bank and ask it to turn off bounce protection on your debit card transactions, but you may not be able to do so for automatic payments or checks. If that’s the case, you may want to discontinue automatic payments until you get a better handle on your finances.

Another option, if you want to continue with automatic payments, is to sign up for true overdraft protection. This is less expensive than bounce protection and taps your savings or a line of credit if an automated expense exceeds your balance.

Automatic payments are a great way to make sure your bills are paid and that you don’t incur late fees. Automatic payments also can protect your credit, since skipped payments on credit cards and loans can devastate your scores.

But you have to be able to keep a pad of cash in your checking account or have low-cost overdraft protection. If you can’t, automatic payments can cause more problems than they solve.