8:07 am
March 17, 2018
Loonie said
Automatic payment may help, but you also need a way to ensure that the money is in the account when needed for the payments.
For some of us, this can be accomplished automatically by deposits from employment or pensions, but this may not always be enough. My CC bills vary considerably from month to month and I would not want to keep the higher amount always available in a low or no interest account..
If there is a HISA with unlimited free bill pay and high (5%+) interest, please let me know, and I'll move my business there!
As far as I know, AlternaBank still offers CoverDraft, which allows money for bill payments to be moved by the bank from savings (currently 2.25%) to chequing to prevent overdraft or default. This means you have to leave too much money at a low rate, but it could be the best solution if your health or memory are sketchy. (See previous threads about this if interested.)
You can set up autopay from your Wealthsimple account, and be earning 4 percent interest which is fairly close to GIC rate. I've done that for one credit card so far, but I usually pay my CC bill early anyways, so I don't know how reliable Wealthsimple is, but I assume they are.
8:29 am
April 27, 2017
Never really had this issue. Yes, my cc bills vary but they are rarely over 5K per card and when I spend 10K on a credit card, its easy to remember. Keeping 5K in a chequing account costs me $250 a year at 5% lost interest, except it costs less because I only fill the account up before the end of the month when cc bills start coming in.
In any case, the account has $20K overdraft limit, which I don’t tend to dip into other than by a few dollars for a day once a year but is well worth having for the peace of mind. Automatic payments work well for us.
Please write your comments in the forum.