Even though we moved about a month ago, we didn’t turn off or cancel service for our utilities at our old home. Same for our old homeowners insurance policy—we kept it active. Since we were in the process of selling our place when we moved, we couldn’t get rid of those things until the sale closed. Although we no longer lived there, we were still responsible for the property.

Well, the sale finally went through and the deal is done. Now I’m working through the process of turning everything off and canceling policies. I almost forgot to do this, however. I don’t know about you, but I had our gas, electric, water, and home insurance policy bills all on auto pay. I could have easily gone on living and not noticed for a month or two that we were still getting billed for the old property. Thankfully, our real estate agent reminded me to do this.

This is one of the reasons I don’t like auto pay options. Obviously, it’s great to take the manual component out of your personal finance tasks. However, it also means that you become more disconnected to money moving in and out of your accounts. If you’re not checking your account online on a daily basis, things easily can slip through the cracks.

Going forward, in our new place, I think I am going to go back to paying all our bills manually. Yes—it’s more time consuming. However, it will be a good exercise for me to stay on top of not only what our different utilities and policies cost, but also will ensure that we aren’t paying for things we don’t need or no longer use. Especially since our current apartment is only temporary and we’ll move again within the year.

What are your thoughts on auto pay? Do you consider it a great convenience? Or do you prefer to do things the old fashioned way?