The average household in America receives about 15 bills per month. The price of stamps keeps increasing and will soon be 50 cents a stamp. If you mail a payment for each one that’s $90 per year just in stamps alone. Now calculate the expense of envelopes, checks, ink and your valuable time and you could be at a hundred bucks a year average. Then there are the occasional times when your check is lost in the mail and you end up having to pay late fees.

What you can do is save your valuable time and your valuable money by signing up with an account at each of your bills to have them automatically deduct your charges from your bank account. By doing that, you can access your bill details online in your account and also make payments from there. If your cable, phone, electricity provider or other service doesn’t allow you to do this, you can make payments via your bank online too. All major banks have a free online bill pay service where you can make one-time payments or scheduled recurring payments. Another advantage of automatic billing is that you’ll never forget to pay another bill again, so goodbye late fees.

It’s also recommended to stop paper bills. They always send you a bunch of paperwork every month and most of the time you end up throwing the bills away since they’re of no use to you. This way you’ll not only save some extra cash but you’ll help the environment as well.

Finally, if they let you bill the charges to your credit card (without any extra fees) then go for that option instead if your credit card offers you rewards points. Of course it’s recommended you pay off your credit card balance every month so make sure you have enough money in your bank account when it comes time to pay off the household bills charged to your credit card.

- Edwin, CashTheChecks.com