How many checks do you write and mail each year?  If you're reading this post you must have Internet access and thus you could be paying your bills online. 

If you are like me and have monthly mortgage, electricity, gas, credit cards, cable, phone, cell phone, auto insurance, trash, water/sewer, etc. bills, the traditional approach of writing checks can be labor intensive. 

To mail the 250+ checks per year I could be writing it would cost over $100 in postage and HOURS and HOURS of time manually writing, ripping, inserting, addressing, licking, sealing and delivering bills.  Not to mention that nasty envelope paste I'd be scraping off my tongue!

First take a look at automating any recurring payments you can be charging directly to your credit card.  This is your best option as long as you don't carry a balance on your credit cards. 

Some bills cannot be charged to a credit card or are charged fees for that convenience.  So pay them online with a billpay account!

Bank of America has an easy to use free of charge billpay service that allows you to pay anyone completely online (assuming you have the $$ in your account of course).  You can pay any bill online and B of A will mail the check for you for free.  Try it out!  Mail a check to yourself!

B of A allows for recurring payments to be made (like your mortgage bill), automatic debits (like your gym), online billings (like your credit cards and electricity) as well as any other payments as long as you have a mailing address.

One note of financial caution.  B of A pays a microscopic .05% on a checking account.  So don't keep too much excess cash there.  Plenty of highly liquid money market accounts currently pay over 4.5% (PayPal is one) that you can use to transfer money to your billpay account as needed.  (OUCH!  Here we are 5 months later and my PayPal money market is down to 2.6%!  Time to look elsewhere for better returns...!)

There are plenty of other online billpay providers out there, so check it out and start saving time and money!  It may feel awkward at first but before you know it you'll LOVE how much time (and stamps) it saves you!