Bill Handel says "See, I don't do automatic cheques . . . ever!"

. . . The bank is always going to take the most effective way of milking you out of as much money as possible. It's like you hand somebody a gun, show 'em where the money is, and then you wonder why they're holding you up! You're an idiot!"
-Bill Handel, a man much smarter than you.

^ what he said. I am losing a 3% 'savings' on my auto insurance monthly, because of my principled stand against automatic debits to pay bills. Automatic drafting works for my boy LB, who has a credit rating of 500-ish, but he is literally incapable of caring for his own finances.

As I told my insurance agent* on the phone a while back: If I have a short-term need for money, say emergency travel or an unexpected doctor's visit, and that money was debited from my account already by the automatic bill pay, I'm screwed. If the money was not debited by automatic checking, I can tell the one creditor they'll have to wait, and maybe work out a payment plan with them, and pay the other party whom I more urgently needed to pay.

Note: this is a problem because of bad choices we made in our finances. When you are up to your nose in debt, and all your extra cash goes toward debt service, you can't have a rainy-day fund. Rainy day is on a credit card, at interest. This is a [deleted] place to be. Extra-fun bonus: this is our situation as a NATION also.

*Broussard is a good agent. I have always had excellent service and their plans are personally tailored by them for each client. I highly recommend the Brian Broussard insurance agency.**

**Neither Allstate nor the Broussard people give me anything to say this. I say it 'cuz I mean it.