A Close Call

Every month, I pay the mortgage and other bills online. Usually as soon as a bill comes in, I login to the bank account and schedule it to pay accordingly. Easy-peasy.

You may remember that I was a little busy on April 1, so it didn't occur to me that we have a monthly bill due that date. Yes, friends, I forgot all about our mortgage.

Our gas bill came today, so I jumped online to set it to pay. I commented to Rob that we had a higher than normal balance in our account, but didn't think much of it (figured our credit card bill must have been less since I'm unable to drive myself to the mall!).

I'd just set the gas bill when I realized our bank account was big because I hadn't shelled out the mortgage. Yikes!

Technically, our mortgage is due on the first of the month, but there's some grace period where we have until the fifteenth day to pay it. And yes, today is April 15. It was too late to pay it through our bank (it takes three days), so I jumped on to our mortgage company's Web site to pay it there.

Notice!, the Web site said. Payments must be made by 8 p.m. ET to be reflected the same day.

It was 7:52 p.m.

I quickly logged in to our account and set it to pay. Of course, the site was slow slow slow and Rob and I were nervous. Seriously, I got the confirmation screen at 7:58 p.m.

Stressful.

At dear husband's suggestion, I just logged in to our bank account and set the mortgage to automatically pay on the first of the month from now on. He'll feel less worried about it, and it's just one more thing done.

I don't know why I haven't thought of that before. :)