In a fitness-related Facebook group I’m a part of, one of the members recently posted a picture of her weekly planner, where she keeps all of the various tasks she has to complete that week. She posted it to share her workout plans, but the thing I noticed was that she had a few notes about bills that were due on certain days.
I have to admit, with the exception of my mortgage (due on the first of the month), and my major credit cards (both due on the 16th), I have no clue when any of my bills are due. Sure, I have a general idea of what month certain bills come around, such as insurance, but other than that, I’m clueless.
So how do I organize my bill pay then?
My Bill Paying Method
My system isn’t really an organized system, but it’s what works for me.
When bills arrive in the mail, I set them in a certain place on my desk and every weekend, I go through the pile and pay what’s there. Because I use the YNAB system, the money is always in my account. Plus, if at all possible (without fees), I try to put everything onto my rewards credit cards. Since I pay them off every month, it’s a great way for me to earn some freebies.
As I am paying bills, on the last weekend of the month, I add my mortgage payment to that pile. While I could have the mortgage company automatically deduct my mortgage payment from my bank account, a friend had some issues with this when she went to sell her house (they forgot to stop the automatic deductions), so for now, I just write a check every month. I’m not a huge fan of automatic deductions. Automatic charges to my credit card are one thing, but just pulling money from my bank account without me doing something to trigger it? I don’t like it.
For the credit cards, when my bill arrives, I log into my account, reconcile the statement, and then schedule a deduction from my bank account to pay off the cards when the bill is due. I’m not turning that money over to the credit card company until I actually have to.
My electric and gas bills both arrive via email, and when they do, I log into the account that day and schedule a payment for the date the bill is due. That way I don’t forget to pay it or lose the email in an overflowing inbox.
It Works for Me
So that’s my system. It’s a little haphazard, but it’s what works for me. And I think that’s the key – it’s what works for me. Bills get paid on time. Sure, my system might not be fancy, and it might not look like it makes any sense to anyone else. Maybe you like scheduling all your payments in your agenda. Maybe you have one or two set “bill pay days” every month. Personal finance is personal. It’s what works for you.
That said, we can always learn a few tips and tricks here and there.
How do you organize your bill paying?
Megan is a 40-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
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