I haven't posted for a few days, mostly because my parents were in town, and I'm completely wiped out. I never like to do this, but I'm posting a little snippet from work.
I'm just really pissed at my landlord. Why the hell is rent due on the 1st, and I get charged a late fee if he doesn't get my check by the 5th if he's not going to cash my rent check for weeks and weeks. It's the 15th, and my rent money is still in my checking account. For some people, this isn't a problem, because they have a month or so cushion in their accounts. But for me (and others I know), this is a dangerous thing to do, because I live paycheck-to-paycheck. If I'm not paying close attention to what's going on, I can easily overdraw my account and bounce my rent check, all because the landlord holds onto the check for weeks longer than he should. I've done this before, it's not pretty.
Luckily, I've set up Bank of America to email me every morning with the balance in my account. That's how I've caught it this time. As much as I would LOVE to actually have the $1550+ in my account like it says, I know that $925 of it can disappear in an instant. I'm contemplating enclosing a little note next time asking him nicely to cash the check promptly. I don't know if this is an assholy thing to do or not. But I may just do it.
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So, what you can do with BofA Bill Pay is have THEM send a check to your landlord. They automatically reduce the amount from your account and your landlord can still take his sweet time cashing it all he wants. I've used it to pay rent when I'm out of town or send money to my dad to pay him back, things like this. It works pretty well. I don't do it all the time only because my apartment has online rent pay anyway. You might check it out to avoid this scenario. =)
ReplyDeleteI've so been there; mine doesn't usually cash the check until somewhere around the 20th, but every now and then (when we're hoping for a little lag, of course) he'll do it on like, the 3rd. One way around it that every landlord I've ever had is fine with is to give them a money order each month instead of a check- your cash is out of your account, and they can take as long as they want. Some even prefer it because it's a guarantee the check won't bounce, a win-win.
ReplyDelete(Also, hello! I've been following for a little while now, just never said anything :) )
Hi Laura! Welcome! I really like the money order idea. I may try this next month.
ReplyDeleteAnd Faith, the Bill Pay thing sounds good too. I'm going to talk to my contact at the bank. It just makes me a bit nervous, but that's just how I am. I'm sure it's fine.
But like I said, it's not a HUGE problem, because I can plan because I know. It's just annoying.
In essence doing it through billpay is just sending it as a money order without having to PAY for the money order (because money orders themselves are not free and they order take some work going to some place that will make them) - whereas if you set it up online it automatically gets paid every month and automatically gets deducted. If you wanted to test it you could send yourself a check for something small (like 25 cents or something) just to see how fast the turnaround is and what the check looks like.
ReplyDeleteIf you want I could log onto my BofA to get the exact steps you would use to send it to your rental company. =)