Which method do you use most often to pay your bills?

Personal check. But my new bank has an electronic bill payment system that looks very interesting.

Personal check

I prefer to have payments which are at a fixed amount (ISP, car insurance, and few others) done by electronic funds transfer. For variable bills (lights, gas, etc.) I prefer to use personal check.

I haven't written a check in years.

personal check

I use Checkfree and am pretty happy with it. I wish Quicken's interface to Checkfree would use the web and not require a damned modem, though.

Personal check

By check, the moment they come in works best for me.

Seems to me that any automated transfer system would be more work than it saves in keeping your checkbook balanced.

Pretty evenly divided between automatic withdrawl and personal check for the bills.

Motley Crue

Kristal_Rose: nope. You can always count on your creditors to take their money on time and for the amount authorized.

jjg: I'd rather have the option to deny payment if I get in a crunch. They've never taken more than the check i've written them. I don't care if they don't cash the check for months. If I had an interest account, each bill I postponed till the deadline would earn $0.30. But the main issue as I stated before is knowing your balance. Do you have a calendar by which you add automated transactions to your register, or do you enter them in advance, or when they appear on your statement?; Seems to me that unless you never write checks & go totally by instant transactions, or maintain a safe balance margin, such a technique encourages one to not balance their checkbook, but go by the banks conception of your balance, by ATM, phone, or website. Too much risk and accounting to remember for my sake.

ATM