Dr. Mac's OS X Tip-of-the-Day  

If you already know about today's tip, this may sound lame to you. But I've recently talked to several people about it and all of them professed not to know such a thing was possible, much less easy. What I'm talking about is paying my bills electronically using Quicken 2002 Deluxe for Mac OS X.

I used to dread bill-paying day. All that handwriting, addressing envelopes, finding lost envelopes, licking envelopes, buying stamps, waiting in line to buy stamps, running out of stamps, and worse. All of that is a dim memory to me now. These days, being the connected and wired-up kind of guy I am, I pay almost all my bills right from this very Mac. No mailbox. No postage. No envelope. No having to move my big, lazy bottom out of the chair. No sirree. My way goes more like this:

• Launch Quicken 2002 Deluxe.
• Type first few letters of payee's name.
• Insert amount of bill. q Choose Send from pop up menu.
• Repeat for all monthly repeating bills.
• Choose Send Payments from the Online menu.

And that's it. It's over for two more weeks. It takes me less time. It's a lot easier. And, because I now use Quicken for all my accounts, it's real easy to see how I spent money in Quicken's reports.

The service isn't free--it usually costs me between $10 and $15 a month. But stamps alone ran me almost that much. And I'd gladly pay double the cost of a stamp to not have to deal with any of that stuff--envelopes, postage, mailboxes, and all.

Not every bank offers it though many do. I get mine through Wells Fargo, but if you own Quicken 2002 Deluxe, choose Financial Institutions from the Online menu and you'll see a lengthy list of banks it works with.

I love it. Paying bills without leaving my chair is so much better than the old way.

For more information about banking, bill paying, and the Quicken 2002 Deluxe program for Mac OS X, visit: https://quicken.com/. Quicken 2002 Deluxe sells for around $60; owners of previous versions get a better deal. Don't forget that many iMacs and iBooks came with an earlier version of Quicken that could make you eligible for upgrade pricing.

To discuss this tip (or anything you like) in Dr. Mac's OSXFAQ Forum, click here:

https://forums.osxfaq.com/viewtopic.php?topic=435&forum;=100

Bob LeVitus is a leading authority on Mac OS and the author of 37 books, including Mac OS X For Dummies and The Little iTunes Book.