I think 'paying bills' here is shorthand for the general administrative burden of being alive, which seems to have grown substantially in recent decades.
For me, "paying bills" is not the literal act of making payments to vendors and creditors. It is the act of exporting one's labor outside the family, in exchange for the medium of exchange required to pay one's bills.
I don't "pay my bills" by writing checks and mailing them. I "pay my bills" by working at a corporate peon job for 40 hours a week. If I do the same kind of work at home on a side project, that is still work, but not "bill paying" work.
The literal act of paying bills takes me all of five minutes every month. An hour per year, whenever I don't have to add any new payees to the system. I spend more time voiding my bowels, which I always seem to have enough time for, regardless of how much time I spend working.
Maybe ancestor post was referring to doing accounts payable and accounts receivable accounting work for the business? Seems like that might be more labor intensive than hitting the "pay" button for the electric bill, even with modern business accounting software. Even then, it wouldn't be something I'd do every day, and if all I felt I could do in the afternoons is light administrative work, I think I'd just knock off early if I didn't have enough to fill at least a solid 2 hours, or if it was the last day of the month.
I'm the ancestor, and yeah, I do work through my own firm and there are some monthly bills and bookkeeping that's not automatic. I also live overseas and pay my utilities and rent via EU bank transfer.
