Today I want to answer the question, you know, I have a payment that I’m making from an auto debit from the bank, and I need to stop that payment. How do I do that?

Well, you know, sometimes that seems like it’s going to be tricky or frustrating, but it should be pretty simple. First, go to the bank. Tell the bank you don’t want that payment coming out of your bank account anymore. The bank really should honor that request and then withdraw that ACH, or let’s say you have it coming out from a debit card. You could go to your debit card company and say, you know what, I have this automatic payment coming out and I need to stop it.

So, that’s the first thing I would do, is go to your financial institution. The next is go to your creditor. Tell the creditor, listen, I need to stop the auto debits that are coming out, so I’m withdrawing the authorization that I gave you to take these auto debits. The creditor really does need to honor that because the creditor can’t just take money from you without your authorization.

If you’re making no headway in trying to get free of this payment, you may have the last resort which is simply pull all the money out of that account and start putting money into a new account. It could be at the same bank, it could be at a different bank. This way when the auto debit comes out of that old account, it will fail, and the creditor won’t be happy, but at least you won’t have that money coming out of your account on a regular basis. The good news is these days, it’s pretty easy to change if you have your Social Security check or disability check or your payroll check going into a bank account every month or every other week or however, but every period of time that you get your pay, it’s pretty easy and pretty quick to have that changed to a new system.