Part of simplifying your life can entail delegation. This typically involves asking or paying someone else to complete a particular task, thereby freeing you from doing it. That type of delegation works well.

Today, however, I am going to engage in some digital delegation. I am going to put every possible bill on auto-pay. Many (most?) of you may already do this, but for a long time I did not.

You see, I was nervous about wrong charges. Many times I’ve had bills that were incorrect, and only once was the error in my favor. I’ve always looked over my bills carefully, called if there were any needed corrections (of course, most of the time there are not), and then written a check or called in a payment for the balance.

I was nervous that putting my bills on auto-pay would somehow remove this option for me. That somehow, my still holding in my account my [generally meager] payment would make it more likely for the bill’s payee to fix a problem. I no longer think this is the case.

When a bill is on auto-pay, I can – and will – still review it in detail every month. I can still call in if there’s ever a problem, and get the problem resolved. Having my bills on auto-pay simply saves me the extra step of then having to write and mail a check, or having to call in a payment. Instead, this is already taken care of for me.

So any bill that can be automatically paid, will now be set up to do so. This removes one small task from my monthly plate, and also makes things easier for those occasions when we’re extra busy or out of town. Plus, this way, I can be certain that my bills will always be paid on time.