Going paperless stage II

Sorry it has been so long since the last post. I'm back!
If you don't know, I recently switched jobs from DSM to Gloucester Engineering. I didn't blog much about the transition because, well, blogs are public and that's the kind of thing you need to be careful about. The long and the short of it is that I'll be making more money and driving about the same distance and speed. This will also let me get more into machine design, and it can potentially cut the commute in half if we move up to Beverly or Salem next May. Now I'm documenting and releasing extruders to the production floor, and helping out a lot with Solidworks (they're all AutoCAD guys and, no offense, aren't the best in the 3D realm).
Anywho, as I explained in my last blog Alex and I are automating our finances. We were able to put together about $500 in that joint checking account as a buffer (Stage I of the plan), and we started automatic debit payments for all of our bills (Stage II). For anything that couldn't be automatically debited online we set up Bank of America billpay for free. Basically you tell the bank to send X a check at Y address for $Z on the Nth of each month, and they do it for you for free. W00t! N3rd.
Some highlights:
We moved our rent payment up to the 15th of each month. This has made the net paycheck amount positive each month, since most everyone else wants to be paid on the 1st too. We did this because Stage II is only automation of the bills, and without evening out the spending cash this would be pretty hard to do.
We'll be paying all of our gas and grocery bills in cash from here on, cash we take out and put in specific envelopes for the purpose each payday. We played with the idea of using a Visa prepaid card for each car and a credit card from a gas station, but we decided that adding additional credit is against the rules, and the prepaid cards are kind of a pain to reload (you have to do it at a vendor, and it's not free). So since we need to isolate this cash for its purpose, cash is the best way to go. Every paycheck we'll head down to the bank and refill the kitty with cash, and throw what we've got left from the payperiod before into savings for the wedding (we have about $500 put away in ING for that so far).
There are only 2 transactions we have to do each month: 1. pay the utilites (varies so much you really don't want to make it automatic), and 2. go get the cash for the kiddies. Life is good!