Thrifty Thursday - Monitor automatic bill paying

When automatic bill paying became available for the majority of my monthly bills, I enthusiastically signed up.  No more writing out checks, buying stamps, or seeing that the bills got sent before their due date.  Everything is done automatically.  And, in general, I still love paying my bills that way.

However...I think I became too complacent in monitoring those automatic payments (or NOT monitoring those payments!).  I admit to going several months without even paying attention to them.  Until yesterday...and imagine my surprise when I discovered that one of the regularly occurring bills had jumped from $63.00 to $86.00 a month without notice!  I followed the payments back several months and sure enough, the company changed the terms of the service and increased their costs by $20.00 a month.  The "service" I'm paying for isn't worth that kind of money and isn't a necessity so I'm going to cancel today.

If I had been paying attention, I would have saved myself several hundred dollars over the course of a year.  So, do yourself a favor and keep track of the bills you pay automatically.  If there are any discrepancies, you can deal with them immediately and save yourself from overspending.  I learned my lesson.