Bank electronic bill-pay has an option to automatically pay the whole bill, whatever it is. I don't do this ordinarily with credit cards, but I do when on a longer trip. The bills I pay automatically I set a limit of up to so much; any more triggers an email to me.

I agree that accessing your bank account from an Internet cafe or via WiFi is a bit dangerous. I do use Internet cafes to access my email at the server.

JeanneB, if you leave your computer on while you're gone, you could prevent your email program from starting up on boot up. If your email program is not running, your emails stay up at the server. Unless somebody else is using the email as well as the computer.

We're going through this kind of financial planning too, because we are going to be in Amsterdam on sabbatical for a year (I'm going to spend the whole year recuperating from all the stuff we have to do to get ready to go). I'd love to try the "just let the bills wait" approach but don't think it would work for quite that long - and we can't afford to pay a whole year's worth of bills ahead of time. ;->

Lucas - I agree with others that for 3 weeks you could probably wing it - after all, most bills come in a few weeks before they are actually due, so how many bills will both come in AND be due during the 3 week period that you are gone? - not many I would think.

Although I think that online bill pay is a great thing. We are going to be renting out our house while we're gone, so will still need to pay mortgage every month, property taxes twice a year, house insurance quarterly, etc. Our bank has a very robust online bill pay system. You can set up different rules for different payments - the fixed payments are the easy ones. For others you can set up rules to have it pay the whole bill, pay the whole bill up to a given maximum and notify you if over, etc. etc. And if you set it all up before you go, with email notices to be sent to you, I would think you won't really even need to log on to your account in an internet cafe or anywhere else.

My husband doesn't travel with me, so this isn't an issue for us, but if we were to leave town together I would not tell local people that the house would be vacant. Had a friend whose apartment was stripped by a now-former employee of an appliance store who "cased the joint" while on a service call and knew exactly when the house would be empty.

Thanks again everyone for the replies.

I agree, the utility bills are a little more forgiving with late payments and charges minimun fees, if ever. (Sprint comes to mind). It's the credit card bills that we are worried about. We don't really like paying those finance charges.

We're leaving the 19th of June. Cut-off dates for our 2 CC ~14th. Takes about 4 days before we get the paper bill and they are due within 3 weeks, so around the 3/4 of the month, just about the time we're heading home.

I think I'll take up the suggestion of calling the CC company and see if they can give us an extra week to pay the bill. Or I think I may just request them to fax me a copy of the statement, which has been close by that date, and send the payment.

As always, you fodorites have once again come to the rescue with your ideas and first-hand experiences! This board is just great!

With loans and credit, just pay early. You must have some idea what the amount will be.

Sit down at your computer, log on to your bank account and set up bill pay. You can probably go to the websites of all your utilities and pay online through your accounts right away.

Make life easy.

We stop using our credit cards about a week before our trip. The night before we're to leave, I call the credit card companies to get the current amount and write a check for that and mail it off. I believe that one of the credit card companies wants the check sent to an address other than the usual one, so call in advance to check on that. As soon as we get home, I call the companies to be sure they got their check. Paranoid!

For another monthly bill we write and send in two checks the month before our trip.

None of the other bill has been that urgent that it couldn't wait for us to get back, depending on the trip schedule. As soon as we get back I look through the mail and pay anything that arrived that we didn't cover.

Before you leave, pay all bills that you have in hand. For all others, estimate and send those in; otherwise in 3 weeks it's not going to hurt anything if you wait until you get back.

If your CC billing cycle ends a few days before your departure, phone after that closing date to find out what the balance is and get the address for mailing a payment without the regular statement coupon. Write a check and mail it.

The mortgage, car payment, others that are the same each month -- mail the payment early.

Utilities that vary by month, just pay when you get back because there's usually no penlty for being a few days late.