Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for November 14, 2022

It’s impossible!

That actually makes a lot of sense.

I have no automatic debits! They send umpteen reminders, even after we have paid – so I wait till the penultimate day to pay my bills! Of course, sometimes this frustrates some members of my family no end – they also like to get to any appointment at least an hour ahead!!

I hate the idea of money being taken from me without me knowing it. It feels like someone borrowing something from me without asking.

We have to have the payments for our cell phones charged to our credit cards as we have to pay by the month in advance (I forget the exact name of the type of service). This is because it costs less.

I figured out that between our two cell phones and our home phone we pay something like $3 a phone call (or more) as we make so few. (Home phone is pay by minute and so is husband’s cell phone only my cell phone is flat rate.) And we also have a Magic Jack line which we pay for annually and a free Internet phone line (for fax machine use – lately I actually have needed a fax machine 5 times in 4 years for work). Magic Jack also charged to same credit card once a year.

Anything else that ends up charged to the credit card we use for these charges is due to our needing to order something by Internet, telephone or mail. it is a credit card which is reserved (with a ridiculously low credit line at our request) for these types of transactions. If anyone gets their hands on the account number the amount they can spend is extremely low.

All other bills are paid by check when we receive the bills. I check all bills received as soon as they come to make sure they are correct and match the slips to the bills.

At least make a list of what they are. As executor of a friend’s estate took me 6+ months to get them all discovered and canceled.

Dang Jimmy, you’ve read my mind – again. Love the strip!

I hate it but my phone company charges extra if you pay by check now. And the cable company would send the bills so you had about 3 days for it to get there which it didn’t and you would get charges for late payment. So I’ve gone automatic on them. Others I pay online but I do it manually to keep track. But here is an interesting fact. The banks make billions on overdraft fees. People don’t bother to keep track of what they are spending as money leaks out of their accounts.

My husband made several auto payments to things he doesn’t remember now that he has dementia. I think the only way to stop them is to close the bank account.

On-line Banking makes checking my balances a daily routine. Using a credit card with a low limit keeps someone from going hog wild should they hack my computer. And even then, the bank protects those transactions.

The only automatic payments I have are for CC and insurance. Everything else I have to schedule through my credit union account.

We have no automatic debits from our bank account or credit card. The “you’ll save _____ amount by allowing us to deduct from your bank account or credit card” always gets a “no” from us. When my wife’s mother died, she had some direct drafts from her bank account, we had a huge problem with getting some of them stopped.

Check your monthly bank statement. It’s all there.

Drop the insurance against that something that might happen but can’t happen because you dropped it to pay for the insurance… ☺

The struggle is real.

I cancelled Netflix and save $17 a month.

My wife had a bunch of those for assorted political candidates from three years ago. People she didn’t even like. She was unhappy when I cancelled the cards a month after I pointed it out to her and they kept deducting.

(I stay in trouble. It’s what I’m good at.)

I am usually early for appointments, or really, for almost anywhere that I go. This is because I bring my handwork-lately it’s been tatting or knitting. This is the best way for me to have uninterrupted time to work on these projects.

That we don’t know what they are? Even the inanimate character would be ashamed of say that gobbledygook. Cartoonists don’t HAVE to write bad English or misspell so often just because it’s a cartoon