Paying bills electonically does NOT mean they're unaffected by USPS slowdowns.

[csziggy]

17. It's not just smaller payees that don't get electronic transfers

My Citi Bank credit card payment is mailed from my bank. I used to time my payment to go out from the bank about a week before the due date. Now as soon as I receive the bill, I set up the payment. That means that the bank marks the payment as "Pending" and the money is not available in my account as much as two weeks sooner, but my payment has not been late since I began doing this.

One of my cards does not send out their bills until two weeks before they are due - which meant that with the mail delays sometimes I have not gotten the bill until after the due date. So now I call them to find out what my balance is when I am making my payments for the other card and set up that payment, too.

I could go to electroni billing so I don't have to rely on the mail, but I prefer having a hard copy at the end of the year when I do my taxes and I'd rather that they pay for the printing than me. Plus when I did try paperless for my accounts before, I got screwed up with all the operations and health problems I was having. Getting back to hard copy was hard since I did not have my passwords or security questions. I ended up one year not getting either hard copy or electronic bills for about six months which messed up my accounting for that year.