Home & family
List your auto-paid bills
The bills nobody sees are the ones that keep charging.
Auto-pay is easy to set up and easy to forget. After a death, those payments usually keep going until someone stops them, and some, like insurance and utilities, need to keep going for a while.
Where auto-pay usually hides
- Bank statements: recurring withdrawals each month
- Credit card statements: subscriptions and memberships
- Your bank's bill pay screen
- Your phone's app store subscriptions (Apple or Google)
- PayPal and similar payment apps
Bills families usually keep paying at first
- Mortgage or rent
- Home and car insurance
- Utilities: power, water, gas
- The phone line
- Health insurance for anyone still covered by the plan
Bills that can often stop
- Streaming services
- Gym memberships
- Magazine and app subscriptions
- Club and charity memberships
What to write down
For each bill, a short line covers it: what it is, roughly how much, the date it comes out, and which account or card pays it. For example: "Electric, about $120, the 15th, Chase checking."
Good to know
When a bank account is frozen after a death, auto-payments from it may stop without warning. Knowing which bills come from which account helps your family catch the important ones.