A Side Benefit to Online Banking

I opened an online bank account a few years ago and have been quite pleased with the results.  Since I now spend so much time on the internet, I find that shifting my banking and bill paying online has its advantages.  One, is that I can sit down once a month and schedule all of my bills to be paid (with the payments occuring later on the scheduled date).  Another advantage is that I don’t have to worry if I’m traveling about when the bills were mailed. The account, (I use ING Direct) accrues some interest, albeit not much these days, on the checking account balance. Since the money is sent electronically, I don’t have to worry about lost checks.  And finally, I’ve found it quite convenient not to receive paper statements and bills and have to deal with writing out checks and finding envelopes. The amount of paper waste we generate has dropped significantly in the last few years.

One surprising side benefit was brought to my attention this week.  The United States Postal Service announced that it was raising the price of a first class domestic stamp to 44 cents as of May 1.  Maybe I’m getting old because I remind myself of my grandmother when I say things like, “I can remember when stamps were less than 10 cents.” Which I can. At 44 cents, it seems to add up pretty quickly.  I estimate that between credit cards, insurance payments, utilities, and so on, that I conduct enough transactions that would amount to over $70 of stamps each year. But since I now pay virtually all of our bills online, this is about $70 saved.  While that’s not a huge amount, for some reason $70 a year seems significant whereas less than 10 cents a stamp seemed negligible.

So, my tip is to use online bill pay.  Because sometimes the convenient answer and more ecologically sustainable answer is also the frugal answer.