Vasiliy,

Just for clarification, I am using autoDraft, not autoPay. Autopay, as you
describe it, is virtually worthless to me because it fails to do the main
thing I want - shift the burden of timely payment from me to the creditor.
As you readily admit, the creditor can change a payment due date and mess up
your schedule resulting in a late charge. Then you must get on the phone
and waste time getting the late fee or finance charge removed. Plus other
screwups are possible which could result in late payment and more phone
calls. Plus with autopay, you have to pay early to make sure the creditor
gets paid on time. This means that your money stops earning interest sooner
than necessary. These says Emigrant Direct is paying 4% on money market
accounts. By scheduling your payments 10 days early you are loosing
interest on your money. Ten days interest every month for the rest of your
life adds up to a significant sum you are loosing.

Autodraft is the only solution that always gets your bills paid on time with
zero risk of late payment and it is cost free and risk free. When you
authorize autodraft, the creditor is bound by that authorization which is
limited to payment of a statement that you receive in advance (which gives
you the opportunity to challenge the charges and even revoke payment
authority if necessary) and payment must be made no sooner than the due
date. Late payment is the creditor's problem, not yours. The result it
that your bills get paid at the latest possible time for free without risk
to you and you earn interest on your funds for a longer period each month.

Think about it and you will get rid of autopay and switch to autodraft
Autodraft works, I have been using it for many years with absolutely zero
problems. In fact I am now in the process of setting up my 3rd Citi
Dividend Card for autodraft from our checking account.


Regards,

Bill Wood
Fountain Hills, AZ

..
..
..
As far as the interest thing goes, the Emigrant direct is a savings account, I pay bills from my
checking account that pretty much always has a very low balance so the extra 7 days of interest
doesn't add up to much. I put enough money into it to pay all the bills and meet the minimum balance
so I don't pay service fees, and the rest goes into savings.

But I had something happen one time that convinced me to not use autodraft ever again. When I was
with Texas Commerce Bank, they were purchased by Chase Manhattan (like 10 years ago or so) and I had
several autodrafts setup to get an additional 1/2% discount off a car loan. When they made the switch
to the new Chase Manhattan systems, instead of making a $622 draft, they somehow moved the decimal
over and it was a $6220 draft. Oh, it was lots of fun. Drained my checking account, drained my
overdraft protection line of credit ($2000 more) and then everything after that went boing, boing,
boing. They took care of everything, but what a total PITA. Initially, there were $900 in overdraft
fees from the bank, and about $1200 more from the places I wrote checks to. It happend just a few
days after I had paid the rent check (still lived in an apartment in those days), the phone, cell
phone, a few credit cards, electric bill, grocery store, etc. I spent about 2 weeks getting
everything straightened out. This was all in the days before online banking so I didn't even know
about it until I started getting all these returned check notices in the mail.

If you like autodraft better, it's a good idea for a lot of people. But for me, I like to say when I
send a payment to someone.
Vasiliy Zaitsev
PGP Key: 0xF8F5619A

"William R Wood" <secret[at]???.net> wrote in message
news:epA0gJx1FHA.1028[at]TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
- quote -

The authorization you sign probably grants authority for the creditor to
change the payment date. That said, I strikes me that concern about the
exactitude of the payment schedule is exaggerated. We're talking about
credit cards here, and the creditor always puts the payment due date on the
printed statement you receive every month, well in advance of the payment
date. (Some may choose not to receive paper, but the information is
available to you one way or another.)

In fact, my experience is quite the opposite of the early draft that people
seem to fear. A couple of my cards post a credit to my account on the due
date. But what's happening is that's when they actually initiate the draft
from my checking account. Bureaucracies being what they are, the draft
doesn't post to my checking account for a few days, meaning *I* get the
benefit of the float. If I initiated an electronic payment from my checking
account, the opposite would be true.

This horse is dead.

"Vasiliy Zaitsev" <foad[at]aol.com> wrote in message
news:6-udnT9GM8dw2cTeRVn-vA[at]giganews.com...

<snip

- quote -

Vasiliy,

Just for clarification, I am using autoDraft, not autoPay. Autopay, as you
describe it, is virtually worthless to me because it fails to do the main
thing I want - shift the burden of timely payment from me to the creditor.
As you readily admit, the creditor can change a payment due date and mess up
your schedule resulting in a late charge. Then you must get on the phone
and waste time getting the late fee or finance charge removed. Plus other
screwups are possible which could result in late payment and more phone
calls. Plus with autopay, you have to pay early to make sure the creditor
gets paid on time. This means that your money stops earning interest sooner
than necessary. These says Emigrant Direct is paying 4% on money market
accounts. By scheduling your payments 10 days early you are loosing
interest on your money. Ten days interest every month for the rest of your
life adds up to a significant sum you are loosing.

Autodraft is the only solution that always gets your bills paid on time with
zero risk of late payment and it is cost free and risk free. When you
authorize autodraft, the creditor is bound by that authorization which is
limited to payment of a statement that you receive in advance (which gives
you the opportunity to challenge the charges and even revoke payment
authority if necessary) and payment must be made no sooner than the due
date. Late payment is the creditor's problem, not yours. The result it
that your bills get paid at the latest possible time for free without risk
to you and you earn interest on your funds for a longer period each month.

Think about it and you will get rid of autopay and switch to autodraft
Autodraft works, I have been using it for many years with absolutely zero
problems. In fact I am now in the process of setting up my 3rd Citi
Dividend Card for autodraft from our checking account.


Regards,

Bill Wood
Fountain Hills, AZ

On 2005-10-17, William R Wood <w.wood[at]cox.net> wrote:
- quote -

I prefer the citi web site much more than the chase web site.
The former is easier to navigate, which is something I have to do
every time I pay my bill (see below).

- quote -

I normally pay everything on time, but I have missed at least once
in the past 5 years. That miss rate makes me very nervous with
things like 0% balance transfers where 0% could suddenly become 24%.

I personally avoid autopay. I much prefer to manually initiate all
of my payments. I'm not quite at the trust level of letting other
people decide when they want to extract money from my accounts.
I'd much rather be in control of that. I have some services that
require autopay so I grudgingly use it. In general, if a service
offers me autopay as an option, I don't take it. But I have many
friends who love it. Different strokes.

- quote -

Amen!
..
..

When I say autopay, I mean autoPAY, not autoDRAFT which is what you're concerned about. What you are
concerned about is others automatically drafting money from your account. I don't much like that
either. By autopay, I mean what Chase allows doing, or if you have MS Money, you can do it inside
there as well. I had (there's just one left now, hurray!) all my credit card companies setup as
Payees, and can schedule how much and when the payments were sent to them. If you are going to be
short one month or have an emergency come up, you just go in and change it to send a different day. I
schedule the payments about 10 days ahead of time, and you'll never have to worry about another late
payment. One caution: still check the statements every month. I got a late payment on one of them
once, and found that it was because they suddenly decided to move my due date up about a week.
Bastards. I didn't get my rate jacked up because of it, but I had to call them to get it refunded,
which wasted about an hour of my life that I will never get back.

As an aside, if you want to get out of debt fast, and have multiple accounts, this is a great way to
do it. Set up the minimum, or a little bit more, to every account except the ones with the highest
interest rate. That one, you send as much extra as you can afford. Then when that one's paid down,
you take the amount you were paying them, and add it to the one with the next highest interest rate,
etc. When you're down to the last one or two cards, your payment will be very large because it will
be an accumulation of all the other payments from all the other cards that are now paid off. The
great thing is that this gets them paid off very quickly, and your current total monthly payment can
stay constant until they are all paid off.
Vasiliy Zaitsev
PGP Key: 0xF8F5619A

On 2005-10-20, Chris Cowles <NoSpam[at]For.me> wrote:
- quote -

No. It means a screwed up budget. See:

http://groups.google.com/group/micro...834bdb57f961a2

Every so often I forget about one of my autopays and I'm
re-introduced to this problem. That being said, I'm not
fundamentally opposed to autopays. I just can't figure out how to
get them to work for me without screwing up my financial tracking
software. I'd love to hear how to get it to work so that I can avoid
the problems that I'm experiencing. Up to this point, the only way
to avoid the problem is to maintain as much control as possible.
But I'm open to other ways of getting it to work.

- quote -

That's correct.

On 2005-10-20, Chris Cowles <NoSpam[at]For.me> wrote:
- quote -

No. What it's meant in the past is a screwed up budget. See:

http://groups.google.com/group/micro...834bdb57f961a2

Occasionally, I forget about one of my autopays and I end up
experiencing this problem all over again. And my only solution
is to be in complete control of when entries get put into my
register. I'd really like to know exactly how to do it so that
I don't experience this problem. I'm not theoretically opposed
to autopays. I just can't figure out how to get them to work for
me without completely screwing up my financial tracking system.

- quote -

Yes. That's correct.

"Chris Cowles" <NoSpam[at]For.me> wrote in message
news:OsnqUqT1FHA.916[at]TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
- quote -


Yes, Dick's info was very helpful too and I want to thank him as well.


- quote -

Good point. I changed it.

Thanks

Bill

"William R Wood" <w.wood[at]cox.net> wrote in message
news:OpGLbTS1FHA.3000[at]TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
- quote -

Actually, it was Dick who clarified for both of us how to make it work
right, but you're welcome.

If your real email is w.wood[at]cox.net, I strongly suggest you change that in
your newsreader setup. You're a sitting duck for spambots that harvest email
address from newsgroups. If OE, for example, use Tools> Accounts> (pick
account)> Properties> Email Address. Change it to something like
w.woodremovethisjunk[at]cox.net to obscure your real address somewhat, or make
it totally bogus. Spambots may have gotten intelligent enough to remove the
garbage automatically, but I doubt it.

"Chris Cowles" <NoSpam[at]For.me> wrote in message
news:esiVldR1FHA.3000[at]TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...


snip


- quote -

Chris,

I think you are right about Mark's EPAY being more automatic now that you
mention it. My bank does not support direct bill payment so I have to do it
manually. I don't really mind manual billpay since I only use it rarely -
only when payees refuse to take a credit card - but direct billpay would be
much easier than what I described.

By the way I want to thank you for the heads up about the Cash Flow Forecast
tool in Money. I have been fooling with it today and it actually appears to
work. It looks so good that I can now terminate my current practice of
pre-entering my scheduled bills and deposits into the register 3-4 weeks
early which lets me see my projected cash balances in advance. Using the
Cash Flow tool instead will save me quite a bit of work and also help my
wife who is a little confused by the pre-entering concept. I have been
teaching Janet how to run Money so she is not lost when I drop dead one of
these days

Regards,

Bill Wood

"William R Wood" <w.wood[at]cox.net> wrote in message
news:uzSsoaL1FHA.3568[at]TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
- quote -

I concur. So what if it's 2 days earlier that you thought it might be? Does
that mean $0.07 lost interest? I don't stretch my finances so tight that I'm
worried about a bill arriving a day or two early, or a deposit arriving a
day or two late. I'm not rich by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm
privileged to have enough slack in my checking account to do that. Others
are not so fortunate.

- quote -

I concur. The penalty of a payment being one day late far outweighs any
interest or control losses of letting it happen automatically. Besides, the
vendor TELLS YOU IN ADVANCE when it's going to post.

- quote -

ePay can mean simply entering a transaction into your register, even
automatically from the bill schedule. That assumes your bank supports direct
bill payment from Money, which mine does. That's much simpler that what you
describe. It sounds like Mark's does, too, although I do not agree with his
apparent concern about the bill schedule. However, that's Mark's checking
account, not mine, and he can pay his bills however makes him most
comfortable. Personally, I don't want to waste the anxiety. I have plenty of
other things to expend effort on.
--
Chris Cowles
Gainesville, FL

"Mark Horn" <mark[at]hornclan.com> wrote in message
news:slrndl8lld.v5d.mark[at]home.hornclan.com...
- quote -


This I don't understand. If I do not pre-enter scheduled bills, Money still
sees them and matches them to my downloads. In other words the transaction
does not have to be in the register to get matched.




- quote -


I never had this happen that I can remember. But I would not enter a
scheduled transaction after it failed to get matched by a downloaded
transaction since that obviously would create a duplicate or if I did I
would delete the downloaded one. Wait a minute, maybe I do remember
this happening when I first setup new scheduled items. I think
this goes away, however, if you let Money download the transactions a few
more times. Money learns what to do somehow.

Regards


Bill

"Mark Horn" <mark[at]hornclan.com> wrote in message
news:slrndl8o89.v7m.mark[at]home.hornclan.com...
- quote -


You might try this again sometime if you feel like fiddling. I definitely
do not have to pre-enter scheduled bills that are on autopay into the Money
register. Money sees them in the list of scheduled bills and matches them
perfectly to downloads and the scheduled bill is then marked as paid in
Bills and Deposits.

Regards

Bill Wood

"Mark Horn" <mark[at]hornclan.com> wrote in message
news:slrndl854q.ul6.mark[at]home.hornclan.com...
- quote -


I have Vonage for VoIP and they do exactly what you say. I don't see any
issue at all with payment dates. They do jump around a little but I don't
care.



- quote -


Virtually all of our expenses including Vonage are scheduled bills in Money.
I do enter scheduled payments into the Money register (right click the bill
and choose Enter Into Register which takes 3 mouse clicks) about 3-4 weeks
early because I want to see the effect of the bills on my bank balance in
advance. I don't recall any problems with matching downloads. I do have
some occasional mismatches but I don't care, I just fix them.



- quote -


Because shifting responsibility for timely payment to the creditor is far
more important to me. Plus I like to pre-enter scheduled Bills and Deposits
into the register which must be done manually. Plus EPAYS are much more
work than entering scheduled transactions into the register.



- quote -


I see your point but I don't understand why you feel this way. What counts
is getting the bill paid on time and you are placing that burden on yourself
when the creditor will accept that responsibility for free and they pay
themselves at the last minute which you cannot afford to do due to the risk
of late payment.



- quote -


What works seamlessly is the automatic payments which are what counts. My
bills are always paid on time and I have zero risk of late payment. If I
have to fiddle with a date or some mismatch I don't care. I don't really
remember any such problems but if they crop up I would just fix them and
forget it. Basically Money matches my downloads perfectly whether I enter
them into the register myself or not.

I agree that user initiated EPAYS are easy but there is no way that is any
easier than what I do which is pre-enter scheduled bills and click Update
Now to download transaction data. EPAYS, if we are talking about the same
thing, mean I log onto my bank's website, click Bill Payments, click the
list of pre-defined payees, find the creditor in the list, type the amount
and date and click send. All that definitely takes way longer that what I
do in Money.

But, and this is only my opinion of course, the details of execution between
EPAYS and autopays are irrelevant to me. I want to shift payment timing
responsibility to my creditors and that's why autopay is so valuable. I
would do autopay even if it was 10 times the trouble of EPAY. You are
obviously a careful guy and can handle the payment timing. I want to be
able to ignore payment timing and worry about having fun I can leave and
go camping or take a trip to Colorado or whatever at the drop of a hat and
not worry about bills getting paid.

On 2005-10-16, Chris Cowles <NoSpam[at]For.me> wrote:
- quote -

Oh, geez, no. Don't do that. That's a recipe for disaster.
When the market defines how much you have to pay in interest in
order to get deposits, but a law caps how much you can charge in loan
interest, the entire economy is ripe for trouble.

Throw in a little inflation and suddenly, you've got a situation
where it costs a bank more to take a deposit than they can recover
in any loans. Banks will simply cease lending money, exacerbating
inflation (the supply of money is down so the cost of everything
will go up). This was bad when we went through it in the 70's.
I don't want to see it again.

On 2005-10-18, Mark Horn <mark[at]hornclan.com> wrote:
- quote -

Oops. I got confused and was thinking of something else. I do
worry about the date variation. Not knowing exactly what date
something is going to happen makes hit hard to anticipate when to
pre-enter autopay transactions.

On 2005-10-17, Chris Cowles <NoSpam[at]For.me> wrote:
- quote -

True. But the difference is that I'm in control. I never have to
worry about the payment not being in the register when I receive
the downloaded transaction.

- quote -

I don't worry about the date variation. But I've run into troubles
with downloaded transactions *NOT* matching a scheduled transaction.
And then the budget gets completely screwed up. I've had it happen
where I downloaded a transaction that did not match the scheduled
transaction, so I enter the scheduled transaction after the d/l
transaction and now my budget thinks that I planned on spending twice
as much in that particular category. I've had so much pain with
that in the past that I don't mess around with it anymore. I make
sure that my scheduled transactions are entered into my register
*BEFORE* I d/l the transaction and all is well. Autopays make that
hard because I'm not in control. EPAYs leave me in control.

I enjoy reading all of these between Bill and Mark. :-)
Between the lines, I learn more than what I initially asked.
I decided to max out the credit line with my Chase Card.

Thank all your folks!



Chris Cowles wrote:
- quote -

"Mark Horn" <mark[at]hornclan.com> wrote in message
news:slrndl854q.ul6.mark[at]home.hornclan.com...
- quote -

As does the payments you initiate, I imagine.

If you don't set them up for auto entry into Money, and you download
statements, Money generally matches the downloaded transaction to the one in
your schedule and records it for you on the correct date. I find it
painless, and the date variation harmless.

On 2005-10-17, William R Wood <w.wood[at]cox.net> wrote:
- quote -

When I say "autopay" I mean that (for example) my VoIP provider has
my credit card and bills my credit card on their billing schedule.
I find this to be an incredible hassle. The vendors don't seem to
have fixed dates. They're relatively fixed, but the jump around
because of weekends and holidays.

The problem that I have with this is accounting for it in Money.
It's been my experience that transaction downloads for transactions
that are scheduled bills match exceptionally poorly unless they're
already entered into the register. What this means is that I
have to manually enter every single one of my autopays before I
get the transaction d/l. This is one of the most annoying things
about autopays. When do I manually enter the bill in Money so that
my transaction download will work? And since I have to manually
enter the bill anyway, why not just do a manual EPAY?

Suffice it to say, I'd rather be in control of the dates and times
that transactions get entered into my Money register. I'd rather
not have a vendor decide that the 15th lands on a Monday holiday
so they're going to move it up to 12th.

I'd be interested in knowing how you've got everything set up so
that it works seemlessly. Because my experience with autopays is
that they're more hassle than manually initiated EPAYs.

"Mark Horn" <mark[at]hornclan.com> wrote in message
news:slrndl7nm5.u89.mark[at]home.hornclan.com...
- quote -


Mark,

I felt the same way about autopay when I first heard about it but, as I now
see it, autopay does not mean you are giving up any control whatsoever.
What you are actually doing is shifting the responsibility for timely
payment from yourself to the creditor. And that is very good for us
consumers. You still control payment because you are the one who
authorizes the arrangement and you have the ability to cancel or change it
at any time, no questions asked. Plus the creditor does not have authority
to extract money from your accounts when they want - their authority is
limited to the payment amount (which you can challenge if necessary) on
their prior written statement to be charged against your account no earlier
than the specified due date. This means that your creditors are paid on the
last day possible which allows you to earn interest on your money right up
to the last second. And if the creditor pays itself late, that's their
problem, not yours I have been using autopay for many years and have
never had a creditor misuse the arrangement in any way. My finances pretty
much run themselves and all I have to do is make sure our checking account
has enough money in it to cover the autopays. This is pretty much automatic
as well since I use automatic direct deposits to cover that

Its almost magical how it works: various people put money in my checking
account automatically and other people take it out (hopefully leaving me a
little left over). The only thing I have to do is click "Update Now" in
Money and check to make sure everything is going as planned. I don't write
any checks, no stamps, no envelopes, no reminders, no hassles. I love the
internet.

Regards

Bill