Bizzare bill payments

If this class (the average ‘middle’ middle class) knew that it had to pay the bulk of its expenditures of usual daily living — telephone, petrol, electricity, water, maintenance, credit card, club subscription and similar recurring, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual payments — by a uniform date each month, it would be able to utilise the liquid money available with it for at least 30 days and deploy such funds at the highest available returns for that period.

But, alas, such payments are required to be made to different service providers at a bewilderingly diverse range of dates through the month. Uniformity qua payment dates is a forgotten or ‘never remembered’ virtue. The obvious casualty is the opportunity to deploy funds in good return alternatives. At the macro-level, the aggregation of such funds remaining undeployed by the entire Indian middle-class would be humongous.

Abhishek Singhvi, 'A consuming headache' (HT)

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