I owe money to the feds (payroll withholding taxes, which are held “in trust” and cannot be written off during a bankruptcy), plus the credit cards that were used to start the business are slowly being
paid off. The interest rate on both accounts is equal — and equally appallingly high. I used the withholding account money to close the business (breaking various contracts and leases), not knowing at the time that it would boomerang on me this way. When I did figure it out, I stuck my head in the sand and didn’t deal with it.

$24 is half of what I charge per hour to a client. Organizing my own invoices and bills during the month took me approximately 4-5 hours, whereas it takes her two — and she has experience working for a tax preparer, so she organizes everything to take to my CPA, drops off my dry cleaning on her way home, and makes sure I invoice and receive payments on time. I could do it all myself, but look at the math … 4-5 hours at $50/hr, or 2 hours at $12/hr? I wouldn’t suggest this approach to a salaried person, but it’s worth it in my case (since I’m paid hourly while consulting) to have her do these tasks that I fear and hate. And as Yoda says, “Fear is the path of the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” $24 is a low amount to pay to not suffer.

Cap’s note: Gotta love the quote from Yoda.

One of your rights was having multiple bank accounts (with different bank institutions). I’m not sure if it makes sense for you but maybe you can save some money if you opened one high yield bank accounts that lets you do bill pay and use a spreadsheet to divide your money up. That way, you get more interest.

You also mentioned that overdraft fees are expensive. I think that having too many bank accounts actually increases your chances of paying for overdraft fees since you have less in each basket to draw from and can’t use another bank accounts funds to cover if you accidentally made a mistake.

And as Elissa mentioned, $24 a month isn’t too bad if it really can help him focus on other things such as generating income and paying off his debt, especially if it helps him avoid missing his financial obligations. I personally prefer to take care of my own paperwork, but I can see how having numerous types of invoices and various bills flying around (consulting is fun that way, I believe) can be quite a headache for some people.

@Moneymonk – He/She owes the IRS, since the payroll tax withholding account was used to, I’m assuming, either pay off the credit cards he used to fund his business or to use to continue funding his business. But I would assume he/she probably still has a couple cards to continue paying off, but not as large as what is owed to the feds.
And $24/mo is an extremely small price to pay to avoid seriously depressing work that can easily throw you into another downward spiral. Having the ABILITY to do something yourself and having the WILL to do something yourself and two completely different things.

“I financed the business’s startup with credit cards”

I’m confused do you owe the IRS or the credit card companies?

And why do you need to pay someone $24 a month, just to write checks and file your bills? you can do that yourself.