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I’ve always heard horror stories of small business owners and clients who don’t pay their bills.

The percentages of electronic bill payment continue to increase. Forrester released numbers on Thursday showing 31% of online households paid bills online in 2004 and that number is expected to increase over the next few years.

We often take paying bills for granted. We routinely do it and not think much about it. We sometimes are not even concerned if we pay bills late. But there are some potential major benefits of paying your bills on time. Here are a few of the important ones:

It is extremely difficult to setup a budget, especially when you are behind on some of your bills. Even if you can make your regular bills and expenses fit neatly into your budget, what can you do if you don’t have the money to catch up?

You’ve heard it before. “You always have to pay your bills on time or it will hurt your credit rating”. The fact is that not paying your bills on time can also cost you a bunch of money.