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How To Easily Organize Your Bills
By Molly's Brother | December 20, 2006
I was talking with a friend last night. She was perpetually late in paying her bills, but not for lack of money. She simply has failed to develop an successful system of paying bills that works for her. Like most of us, she admitted to being inundated with junk mail everyday. It’s this abundant arrival of paper on a regular basis, she says, which make the process of going through her mail a bit daunting. I know some of you feel exactly the same way she does.
Here are some easy-to-follow steps that will not only help you to pay your bills on-time, but will also help you de-clutter your life.
1. Change Your Behavior Instead of dropping your mail on a table with your keys as you walk into your house, sort through your mail near your shredder and your recycle bin. You’ll quickly make three piles:
- a keep pile (bills, letters, magazines, etc),
- a recycle pile (circulars, ads, and generic mail addressed to “occupant”)
- a shred pile (credit card offers or other advertising that has your address/personal information on it). Shred this pile immediately. (In less than five minutes, you’ve de-cluttered a small part of your life.)
2. Separate Out Your Keep Pile Remove your bills from the magazines, cards, and letters. Place your bills in a simple box or file that is near your desk, computer, or an area where you sit down to pay your bills.
2a. If you don’t have a regular place or time where you sit down to pay your bills, create it now.
2b. DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT allow your bills to accumulate in random piles all over the house. This is a surefire way for you to lose track of your bills. If company arrives, the piles will be quickly collected and dumped into random drawers. Oh yeah, and forgotten about forever.
3. Open Your Bills Right Away Even if you don’t pay your bills right away, you should at least glance at them as soon as possible and note the due date. You think you have a handle on this information, but all too often you’ve either remembered dates incorrectly or remembered that a bill was due long after its due date.
4. Mark Your Calendar Mark the due dates in your calendar and mark a reminder a week or so before your bill is actually due. (If you use your computer’s calendar, be sure to add an alert.) Paying your bill on this “alert” day will help you avoid late fees. Remember, some companies have a grace period following a bill’s due date. If your payment arrives within this amount of time, you’re not charged with a late payment. However, other companies–like credit card companies–do not. A late payment is a late payment is a late payment and will cause you to incur late fees and increase your interest rate. Therefore, you should get in the practice of paying all your bills on time.
5. Prioritize On Payday When payday hits, prioritize your money. Don’t go buy those cute shoes or those great golf clubs you saw on sale if you haven’t paid your bills yet.
6. Keep Stamps Around I would guess that many have incurred a $20 late fee because they kept forgetting to buy a $0.39 stamp. Stock up on stamps (and even a couple extra envelopes).
7. Think About Online Bill Pay If you’re always running low on envelopes and you barely have enough money in your budget for stamps, then consider online bill pay. Be warned, though, that sometimes your payment is instant and sometimes it takes a few days for it to get processed through the system.
Your system for organizing your bills may be a more streamlined version of this. However, if you are always fretting about late fees and if you are always remembering that your phone bill was due yesterday, then perhaps now is a good time to invest in an organizational strategy regarding your bills.
Topics: Personal Finance |
December 20th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
Great ideas! It’s so easy to just throw your papers every which way and wonder what happened to it later. Keeping a good system helps you feel more confident in your bill paying too!
December 20th, 2006 at 8:34 pm
It’s highly likely, too, that by organizing your bills you will become more organized and disciplined with your other financial responsibilities, too.
December 20th, 2006 at 9:19 pm
those are good suggestions. i use wachovia online bill pay (i got it free with my free checking account) and i subscribe to email notifications for my bills. every time i get one, i go and schedule it to be paid according to when i get paid. if something comes in the mail, then schedule it right away.
December 21st, 2006 at 10:01 pm
This one has hit home. I know I’ve got a pile on my work desk at home, a pile in my laptop bag because I wanted to deal with it later, and who knows where else. Thanks for yet another great piece of advise!