Information Security & US & Life & Love & Fashion & Hacking & Passion

Online bill paying has certainly made a nagging monthly chore easier. But there's still usually multiple Web sites to juggle -- and passwords to remember.

Now, there are several services that promise to consolidate your bills and let you pay them all in one place. We tested three services to see if they could streamline our tasks: Quicken Bill Pay, PayTrust and MyCheckFree.

There certainly seems to be a market for such services. A 2007 survey from Harris Interactive and the Marketing Workshop found that those surveyed pay on average 11.5 bills a month. Seventy-four percent of surveyed households pay at least one bill online. And on average, respondents said they spend about two hours a month dealing with the logistics of paying bills.

Quicken Bill Pay (quickenbillpay.com) is a product of Intuit's Quicken money-management system. It costs $9.95 a month for the first 20 payments, allowing you to route 10 different bank accounts through Quicken Bill Pay. Additional sets of five payments are $2.49 per set. And there's a 30-day free trial for up to 20 payments.

You can also use Bill Pay with the desktop version of Quicken software, a program to track bills, spending and saving plans. If you do, you get some extra features with Bill Pay. (Our tester already had the desktop software.) That desktop software costs between $49.99 and $139.99 and is available in a CD-ROM version or for download directly from the site.

Setting up the account took us almost half an hour -- and we had to enter a ton of information. By the time we found our checkbook with our account number and the addresses and information of all the payees (the company or person you owe money to) -- the Web site had already timed out, and we had to log back in. It then took two more days for Quicken to verify our checking account.

Once we set everything up, it was fairly easy and convenient to pay all of our bills, including our two credit cards and our cellphone bill. It also allows you to schedule payments up to one year in advance so you don't miss any payments. However, we couldn't pay our cable and electricity bills because those accounts are in our roommate's name.

We liked the financial overview set-up of the Web page that let us keep constant tabs on our "cash flow center." The site monitored the amount in our checking and savings accounts and the amount owed on credit cards and "property and debt" to calculate the bottom line: our up-to-the-minute net worth.

PayTrust (paytrust.com), another product of Intuit, has three different services for paying bills: Total Bill Management ($12.95 per month for 30 transactions), PayAnyone ($2.95 per month for no free transactions) and PayAnyone plus E-bills ($4.95 per month for no free transactions). Additional transactions under any of the three plans cost 50 cents. (Receiving and paying a bill each counts as one transaction).

We received an email each time a new bill came in. That got a little annoying, since we were also getting notice emails from each of our payees as well. The service allows you to manually approve bills or set up automatic payments. A neat feature: You can set up payments for a range of debts, including babysitters and loan payments to friends. When we had problems setting up our account, customer service solved our issues over the phone in less than five minutes.

You can also export your payment information to online bill-managing programs or order a CD of your bills for recordkeeping purposes.

MyCheckFree (mycheckfree.com) allows users to pay bills from over 400 different providers. But that didn't include our bank, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. or our student-loan lender, SLM Corp., commonly known as Sallie Mae. MyCheckFree charges no fees for the site, but Lori Stepp, a spokesperson, says there's a chance that your bank might charge you to use the service.

The site did carry our cable company and our power company. But since those bills were not in our name, we couldn't add them to our MyCheckFree profile -- and thus couldn't pay them via the service.

Paying for newspaper subscriptions and cellphone service is an option through MyCheckFree, but users need to have their account number handy. It was easy to pay our Macy's credit card bill. We just needed to give our credit card number.

Overall, the site was easy to navigate. But since it didn't allow us to make payments on our regular credit card or our student loan, we didn't find it all that useful. In response, Ms. Stepp said that she encourages consumers to pay bills through their bank if it's easier, but that MyCheckFree can save bill payers the headache of "having to remember 10 different passwords for 10 different sites."

Whether you choose to pay your bills with a service or on your own, the fact remains -- you still have to pay them.

-- Shelly Banjo and Brittany Hite contributed to this article.

U.S. stocks were trading higher Monday, jumping back to earlier highs after Fed chief Ben Bernanke's testimony on signs of loosening in the credit crisis. Investors responded positively to some positive earnings reports and to a narrowing in credit market spreads, which suggests that the government's efforts to stabilize the banking system are starting to work.

European stocks were higher as banks lined up to tap state rescue packages to shore up their finances, part of measures to stem a global financial crisis.

Bonds were slightly lower, with yields moving a bit higher. The dollar index was lower. Gold futures were sharply higher. Oil futures were up on speculation OPEC will cut output at emergency meeting.

On Monday, the Dow Jones industrial average was trading 199.60 points, or 2.25%, to 9,051.82. The S&P 500 index was up 24.36 points, or 2.59%, at 964.91. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index rose 21.03 points, or 1.23%, to 1,732.32.

On the New York Stock Exchange, 22 stocks were trading higher for every seven that were in negative territory, while on the Nasdaq the ratio was 17-8 positive, amid moderate trading, according to S&P MarketScope.

Major European indexes were trading higher Monday. In London, the FTSE 100 index surged 5.41% to 4,282.67. In Paris, the CAC 40 bounced 3.56% to 3,448.51, while Germany's DAX index rose 1.12% to 4,835.01.

In Asia, Japan's Nikkei 225 jumped 3.59% to end at 9,005.59, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng index surged 5.28% to close at 15,323.01.

President Bush, looking for answers to an economic emergency with just three months left in office will host an international summit to discuss ways to fix the world financial system but warned against reforms that threaten capitalism. "We will work to strengthen and modernize our nations' financial systems so we can help ensure that this crisis doesn't happen again," Bush said at the Camp David presidential retreat, according to an Associated Press dispatch. Bush, meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, did not announce a date or site for the summit. But Sarkozy suggested it be held in the shadow of Wall Street before the end of November.

Governments continued to announce measures to shore up financial institutions. Germany's cabinet approved strict conditions for banks that make use of its €500 billion rescue package, including limits on managers' salaries, bonuses and severance. "The criteria for appropriate (remuneration) are based on responsibilities and personal performance, business conditions and the success and outlook of the company compared to others in its field," the provisions agreed by cabinet stated, according to a Reuters dispatch.

Bavaria's public sector bank, BayernLB, was ready to ask for funds, Bavaria's finance minister said. Commerzbank said it would take a close look at using the funds. Societe Generale led a steep fall by France's top three banks as concern heightened they may be next in line for state funds. On Sunday, the Dutch government agreed a €10 billion cash injection into financial group ING (ING), powering its shares higher by almost 23%. ING said it had agreed to sell its Taiwan Life insurance unit to Fubon Financial for $600 million, increasing its capital in a deal analysts said would benefit shareholders. In Sweden, the government outlined a plan worth more than 1.5 trillion crowns ($271.5 billion) that would include credit guarantees and a bail-out fund. "The government is proposing powerful measures to ease the effects on Swedish households and companies of the financial turbulence," said Financial Markets Minister Mats Odell.

Traders listened to Bernanke's testimony on the U.S. economic recovery to the House Budget Committee. Saying that uncertainties around the economic picture are unusually large, the Fed chief said it would be appropriate for Congress to pass a second fiscal package to stimulate growth. While recovery from what he expects to be a protracted economic slowdown will depend on how quickly confidence returns to the financial system, he said he was confident that the measures the government is taking would help restore people's trust in the financial system.

Also on the Fedspeak calendar Monday: Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart on the U.S. economic outlook and Fed Gov. Randall Kroszner on risk management.

Offering more detail about the Treasury's plan to inject $250 billion into banks, Secretary Henry Paulson said the the new capital should be deployed, not hoarded, though the government hasn't defined the type of lending to avoid forcing bad lending decisions. Paulson also said he expects lenders to step up efforts to aid homeowners in avoiding foreclosures. So far interest has been pretty broad in the program and he emphasized that these are investments, not expenditures, which should ultimately not come at a cost to taxpayers.

In economic news Monday, U.S. leading indicators rebounded by a better than expected 0.3% in September, from a revised 0.9% decline in August (-0.5% previously). That left the 6-month annualized rate of change at -2.5% from -2.1% previously. Positive contributions from money supply, consumer expectations, and the yield curve more than offset negative contributions from building permits, initial jobless claims, stocks, and the factory workweek, notes Action Economics