Long cruises--how do you pay your bills?

[ddgg]

I would love to take one of the long cruises--28+ days. For those of you who have done this, how do you arrange to pay your regular monthly bills (gas, electric, phone, cable, etc) ?

[Shmoo here]

I would love to take one of the long cruises--28+ days. For those of you who have done this, how do you arrange to pay your regular monthly bills (gas, electric, phone, cable, etc) ?

 

Some of our bills are set up for automatic deductions/charges on our CC. For the others, we have adult children still living at home, so we put money into their checking accounts for them to pay the bills as they come in.

 

:)

[LHT28]

Some are paid automatically to my CC other I can check the amount due online then just pay online ( i take my net book)

You could also prepay what you think it may be

[sail7seas]

If you are only going to be cruising one month or slightly less, pay double on the last bill before you leave home.

 

If your normal electric bill is $100, pay $200 or a little more to have room for slight variance. You are thus pre-paying. Do the same for your telephone and all monthly bills.

 

Many people pay bills on line or they have automatic withdrawal for bills they get every month or every quarter.

 

[SadieN]

We use bill pay thru our bank. We just put in the dates we want the bills to be paid.

[fleckle]

We leave our bills on autopay all the time, whether traveling or not (credit cards, cable, all utilities).

 

It is so easy that way, no concern about keeping track of payment due dates and peace of mind knowing we will never have a late payment charge.

Everything just gets paid automatically on the payment due date.

 

If there is ever a problem, we can call and get it adjusted after we return home, but that has very rarely happened.

[PrincessE]

Bill Pay through my credit union. I have all my bills sent to me electronically. I don't have auto pay because I'm kind of a control freak. That being said, my bills are emailed to me and I put the pay date and payment amount into Bill Pay.

 

I check my email once a day while onboard so this works out very well for us.

[Davechipp74]

im still trying to figure how im gonna pay my bar bill after my 17 day cruise

:eek:

[april47]

On my B2B Europe trip I bought internet minutes and did online banking. Most were autopay but I doublechecked most days. It'sso easy to transfer ffrom

savings and check charges on any cards too. Its a public computer so make sure to uncheck boxes to save passwords and to erase your history too.

[cb at sea]

Or, just pay them in advance....if you "overpay" this month, you'll have a credit toward the next month!

 

We are frequently "out of town" so we stop our mail and don't actually GET our bills....I know about how much they are, and pay in advance.

 

If you can pay online, you can certainly find some "wifi" spots ashore to take care of what you can't do before you leave home.

[Treven]

I also have auto bill pay through my bank. I pay a specific $ every month to each utility or cable or credit card. My retirement and Social security deposits are direct deposit to my bank so I don't have to be home waiting on a check to arrive, and I know I'm going to get the same amount each month, so it's easy not being a control freak as far as my bills go.

[sail7seas]

We leave our bills on autopay all the time, whether traveling or not (credit cards, cable, all utilities).

 

It is so easy that way, no concern about keeping track of payment due dates and peace of mind knowing we will never have a late payment charge.

Everything just gets paid automatically on the payment due date.

 

If there is ever a problem, we can call and get it adjusted after we return home, but that has very rarely happened.

 

 

How do you know in advance how much your credit card bill will be? Doesn't it vary month to month? How do you set up to be sure the bill is paid in full when you don't know how much?

 

[vivavegas]

We use automatic bank draft and everything is prescheduled for payment

[PennyAgain]

On bills that stay much the same from month to month, I pay for more than one bill at a time.

 

I do autopayment with credit cards (and get the airline miles for that)

 

I prepay as much of the trip as possible.

 

and in addition to keeping records on my computer, I have a large piece of poster board with a list of all the bills that need to be paid before I travel.

 

So far so good.

[ddgg]

Thanks everyone. That gives me a lot of options to think about.

[notentirelynormal]

How do you know in advance how much your credit card bill will be? Doesn't it vary month to month? How do you set up to be sure the bill is paid in full when you don't know how much?

 

 

My friend does this. He has two accounts. His real one and the one that he pays his bills with. He gives access to all the credit card companies (LOL I think he's only got 2) to automatically deduct the full amount of the bill out of this account. The same for utilities, etc. When account 2 gets low there is an auto transfer from account 1 to load it up again. He can be home for 2 days or 2 months or on the road for the same or even 6 to 8 months at a time so this guarantees payment without him having to go on a computer. He is not always somewhere where he can get access and he never knows when he's working where he'll be when or for how long. By using the second account it insures that if something goes wrong or there is fraud they don't get all his money.

[fleckle]

How do you know in advance how much your credit card bill will be? Doesn't it vary month to month? How do you set up to be sure the bill is paid in full when you don't know how much?

 

Yes, it does vary widely month to month. We do not know or care in advance exactly how much it will be, although we have a rough idea.

 

We have our bank account set up to pay the full amount on each credit card each month, the same as paying an electric bill or any other charge that varies month to month.

 

It is just a matter of personal preference to do it this way as we don't want to spend any of our vacation time bothering with paying bills or doing other mundane chores.

We are also leery about entering personal account information at wifi hotspots, with all the stories of supposedly secure sites that have been hacked.

 

After we get home, there is plenty of time to check out our bank statement and credit card statements.

 

As for the answer to your question of how "to be sure the bill is paid in full" of course we cannot be absolutely sure it has been paid until we see it on our statement, but we trust our bank.

They have been paying our bills for years with no problem and we have never had a late payment charge.

[Waynetor]

If you are going away for a month or more it is worth it to call your car insurance co. and have them cancel the collision part for the duration you are away - you just call when you get back to reinsate. Doesn't help pay the bill while your away but helps make one of them smaller.

[fleckle]

If you are going away for a month or more it is worth it to call your car insurance co. and have them cancel the collision part for the duration you are away - you just call when you get back to reinsate. Doesn't help pay the bill while your away but helps make one of them smaller.

Only if you know for sure that you are not going to be driving a rental car during that time. I would hate being stuck with the much higher charge to take out insurance coverage from the rental car company. :eek:

[sjcruiser]

Auto pay, pay in advance, or pay while online through the internet.

[Krazy Kruizers]

I would love to take one of the long cruises--28+ days. For those of you who have done this, how do you arrange to pay your regular monthly bills (gas, electric, phone, cable, etc) ?

 

I have one checking account that is strickly for bills. The bills are automatically taken care of each month electronically. Before we leave for cruises I just make certain that there is enough money in the account to cover all our bills. We have been doing this for years.

That way I don't have to worry about going on the Internet and paying bills that way.