The mortgage company makes even more money when they sign you up for those twice monthly payment schedules. My MC sent me a letter about that and the enrollment fee was also $300. But the two payments added up to more than my present monthly payment. Their explanation was that a partial payment resulted in 14 days additional interest being added to the total monthly payment. But that plan isn't designed for someone who can afford to make their monthly payments. It's designed for folks who are on fixed income, have all of their bills coming out of their accounts on the first of the month and don't have enough to cover the one big one (the mortgage) all at once. For some people it can be a Godsend. However, you do (they do) wind up paying more over the long haul. The mortgage company doesn't want you to pay off your loan early, because they make money on the interest that you pay. Likewise they cannot tell you not to send additional principle with your monthly payment. This information is in your original loan documents, but if you don't understand them yourself, get a lawyer to explain it to you. Your bank actually may have someone who will look at it and explain it to you free of charge. And yes I do all of my banking and bill paying on line. All the banks' on line bill paying systems are similar, so it's actually not difficult to change banks if you get better service from one than another. The best thing about paying bills on line is that they post on the date that you specify when you send the payment. If you mail a check, you never know precisely when it arrived, all you will have is the cancellation date stamped on the back when the mortgage company posted it. When you mail a check, the mortgage company can claim they didn't get it by the due date and charge a late payment penalty. Banks and mortgage companies routinely post debits in the morning and credits in the afternoon. So if your account has $100 on Monday, then you make a deposit of $50 Monday afyternoon, you won't have a balance of $150 until Tuesday afternoon. But if you leave the bank and go pay your light bill for $101 on Monday afternoon, your check will bounce on Tuesday morning. Then you owe the bank the $25 overdraft fee on top of everything else. So what I can't figure out is if banks are supposed to be so good at managing money, making money and gouging money out of Jane Q. Public, why are Janes tax dollars being used to bail out the @#(*&@# BANKS?????????? I think if a business is such a poor manager of their assets that they go broke, why would we want to help them stay in business? It's the taxpayers money that they have squandered to get where they are right now, why does the government want to give them some more? OK, I'm hot about this bailout program and while the President is a compelling speaker, I'm not convinced that this is going to help the country at all. And using tax dollars to shore up private business is wrong. Maybe I'll start a business that will provide a service to every American politician: An Iron-Clad Guarantee to Go to Heaven. They only cost the individual politician 1k and then he/she can do anything they want to for the rest of their lives becuase they know they will spend eternity sitting on a cloud. This is an essential business to America because right now there are only 7 politicians in heaven, and none of them are Americans. We want our politicians to be represented in heaven, so I figure they all need one of these guarantees. So if Congress grants me 1.2 billion dollars, I will issue enough guarantees to cover all our major politicians and many of the minor ones. I might even be able to cover some of the ones who are in prison right now. Course I'm going to need a bonus (like the big bank bosses got) and a nice hotel to live in (like Dallas mayor wants to build) and a corporate jet (at least as good as the one Lee Iaococa has) in order to complete my mission. Yeah, I figure 1.2 billion should cover it. But first I'm going to register myself as a minister of a church (that would be the church of IDM) so I don't have to pay any taxes anymore.

I use online bill pay (through a small local/regional bank) for everything except a few things paid-on-the-spot, like car registration. Had a similar situation with a magazine subscription. Bill pay submitted a printed check, not an electronic transfer. After a month the check had not cleared and the magazine sent notice of suspended service pending receipt of payment. I contacted the magazine, they suggested waiting a couple more weeks, as payments submitted without an remittance coupon take longer to post (the CORRECT magazine account number was printed prominently on the check). Two more weeks, still no payment posted or cleared. The bank suggested putting a stop-payment on the presumed-missing check (at no cost to me), and resubmitting the payment. I was tired of waiting and wasn't particularly missing the magazine, so I canceled it with them. The payment posted the NEXT day after my cancelation. That triggered the magazine to send a REFUND check, which I knew I was not due because the check would be refused when presented for payment (stop-payment on it). I held the refund check without cashing it. A few weeks later I got a card from the magazine advising the payment had "bounced" and that subscription service is suspended until cleared. So I had to CALL the damn magazine AGAIN to get the situation settled. They said everything is OK from their end, the subscription shows to be canceled, and I can simply destroy the refund check. Point is that I had properly submitted the online payment, so my bank took responsibility for the mishap in doing a stop-payment at no charge to me. You need to get in contact with Citibank billpay customer service, outline the time-frame of your events, confirm that you have submitted the online payments correctly (assuming you DO have the correct remittance address and account number on them), and have the bank investigate why your payments are not getting posted properly to the gas company. It could be that you're setting the trigger date for the payment too close to the due date of the bill, considering the payments are being done by the billpay service mailing a printed check .... in which case that may be your responsibility, not the bank's. By the way, I was previously with Washington Mutual, using their online bill payment service. They also deducted the payments immediately on the trigger date, for both electronic funds transfers and printed checks. The community bank now does not deduct the funds until 1) an electronic transfer actually occurs, or 2) a printed check is cleared through my checking account.

We worked with a well-established local custom cabinetmaker, a mom-and-pop shop. The cabinets, including installation, were around $55,000. We paid one-third upon signing of the contract / approval of design (this was in November '07), then monthly payments (~$5,000) until installation was completed to my liking. Things were d-r-a-g-g-i-n-g toward the end (although to be fair, compared to many others we had it incredibly easy). They understood I was waiting to make final remuneration until everything was done but did ask me for at least half of the final payment (again, ~$5,400) -- I refused. I'd been burned before and while they probably wouldn't have left me hanging I just did not want to find out! The day he came to finish everything I handed him a nice fat check and we were both happy. So it was one-third down, monthly progress checks in approximately equal amounts (to the final payment).

Oh carp! I'm going to be in a similar situation. Yet I also told Lynnie to wait until the job is done. It feels different when the shoes are suddenly on my feet! My counters will be installed Jan 11. My custom cabinet guy has been pretty great (though very, very, very, very slow). He doesn't want to do the finishing touches on the farm sink (scribing it in tightly) until the counters are in (b/c he wants to give the counter guys some wiggle room to get the sink situated just right). But his cabinets will be done next week. Our contract was a bit different: 50% down payment. Other 50% on completion. Shoot, shoot, shoot. My husband says he'll withhold 10% until the final scribing is done. But this will definitely feel embarrassing. My relationship with the cabinet maker has been something of a "father-daughter-don't worry-I'll-take-care-of-your-kitchen-I-want-to-see-you-happr-dear" type. It's just me and the "one man show" cab guy. Oh shoot! What should I do?? If I pay everything, I know I'll lie awake at night worrying. Especially given how slow he does things. But previous tinkering with the details of our contract have all been done on a handshake basis. So we seem to have established ourselves as people of honor. Bottom line: I'll be worried sick if I pay everything. Yet how do I withold the 10% without awkwardness?? I'm thinking of asking him to wait til next year to finish the cabs (he needs to do the doors, drawers, and dishwasher panel. Right now we just have the boxes.). That way, he and the counter guys will be done at the same time. Tally Sue, do you have an elegant way of phrasing this for me? Basically, I want to say, "I don't want to pay you until the job is done. So don't finish it until the middle of january." Help! Francy