Take A Financial Health Day! - Part 3

Today, I took my third financial health day in the last four weeks. Many of the actions I have taken in recent weeks were ideas that I picked up from Ramit Sethi's blog and book of the same name, I Will Teach You To Be Rich. I highly recommend this book for practical, everyday ways to save money

My focus for this day was to automate my monthly bills. In the span of 2 hours, I automated the following bills:

1. Auto, home, and life insurance policies under the same company.
2. Cell phone.
3. Electric company. I wasn't able to complete this over the phone, but our local company is mailing me the auto-draft form to complete and mail back. It will take a couple of billing cycles to get this locked in automatically.
4. Gas Company.
5. Water Company. I mailed in the form and voided check, so this will take an additional billing cycle to take effect.
6. Trash Pick-up.
7. Cable/Internet.

The majority of these companies were pleasant to deal with, and I was able to accomplish the automatic monthly payment feature relatively easily. What I did find strange, though, is that each company has different procedures to get this accomplished. A couple of them were all done by phone - fast and easy! A couple of them directed me to their website to do everything online. And the final three had more dated procedures of printing out forms and mailing or scanning/emailing voided checks. With today's technology, I assumed we were past the form and voided check days, but apparently that is not the case.

The purpose behind automatic payment of these regular bills is to:

1. set it and forget it!
2. avoid late payments.
3. save time paying bills.
4. boost personal productivity.

Do you automate your finances and has this been a positive or negative experience for you?