In this downturned economy, it is important to keep track of your money as it enters your account and more importantly how it leaves. That means you need to keep a tight eye on your bank account and the bills you are paying. This is one more magical way the internet helps you. Online banking and online bill pay are features that most major banks now have for their customers. In fact, you’re probably just making your life harder if you don’t use internet banking. It really simplifies things. Here’s a quick rundown of what you need to know.
Online Banking
Online banking is basically an online bank account statement for all of your deposits and withdrawals. This is available for both your checking and savings accounts.
These usually have the ability to go back three months, but even more extensive records can be requested from your bank at any time. This is an easy and convenient way to keep tabs on your bank accounts to watch your spending, prevent fraud, and to just see where it all goes. Sometimes, it can be a mystery of how you spend your paycheck and how quickly.
With online banking, you no longer need monthly paper statements from your bank. All the information that these would provide is available online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you don’t want to trust your bank though and would rather have paper evidence if ever the need should arise, you can still opt for monthly paper statements.
Online Bill Payments
The other great feature of online banking is online bill pay.
Bill pay is a tool that tracks your bills as you wish. You can set up monthly bills to be paid automatically on certain dates, dates received, or any number of combinations. You can also set up bill pay to have invoices paid on a one-time basis.
You can also use this to keep track of your monthly bills in a single location to see how the charges vary and the billing dates. This also allows the ability to view the entire history of your monthly bills. You can see how monthly bills break down, where you need to cut back, what can be cut out completely, and overall what you really need to spend money and what’s not necessary.
Final Thoughts
If you’re looking for a new bank or trying to find out how to get the most out of your current bank, look into online banking and bill pay. These handy tools will undoubtedly save you money from becoming more conscious of your spending and time with converging bill payments to a single page.
Online banking and online bill pay are sure to pay big time for you.
