Time and Money

One of the big practical challenges of leaving home for 6 weeks as we did earlier this year is figuring out how to pay the bills: who wants to come home to find the car repossessed and the electricity cut off?

As it turns out, it was a lot easier than I thought it would be.

On the business front I made sure that there were signed cheques in place to cover the corporate income tax and payroll remittance bills — the two unforgiving federal “we will charge you more penalties than you can possibly believe” bills. Johnny helpfully made sure the checks went to the right place at the right time.

At home, I paid all the outstanding bills the day before we left on May 8th, made our property tax bill payment online on May 31st, and paid our credit card balances online too as we traveled.

While there was a giant pile of mail waiting for us when we arrived back home on June 21st, nothing was extremely past due, and most bills were just waiting for the next regular payment. So, no problem.

If we were going to be away for 2 or 3 months — Berlin 2007? — we’d have to make more complicated arrangements, as the bills would simply pile up too high.

Comments

Charles's picture
Charles on June 30, 2006 - 21:56 Permalink

You might want to look into your bank’s online banking offering. I know that with the one at Royal Bank I can pay *all* of my bills online. That includes Provincial and municiple taxes, which suprised me.