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Thursday, February 16, 2012

Organize Your Bill-Paying System

Welcome to another organizing post! So glad you are hanging in there with me. This week we are organizing our bill-paying systems. Another fun one, right? lol

If you are just checking in for the first time, we have been getting organized each week using Jennifer Ford Berry's Organize Now book. It has been really great giving us weekly goals to organize different areas of our life.

If you are catching up you can see the past posts here:

Week 1 about Organizing Your Mind and Life Vision HERE,
Week 2 about Organizing Your Priorities HERE,
Week 3 about Organizing Your Schedule HERE
Week 4 about Organizing Your Cleaning Schedule HERE.
Week 5 about Organizing Your Personal Information HERE. 
Week 6 about Organizing Your Finances HERE. 


Like I mentioned last week, I have a very good way to organize my bill-paying system. His name is David and he is my husband. lol. He really is great at it. He goes through our mail and pays the bills every Sunday evening. He uses Quicken to keep track of our income and expenses. We use a lot of online bill paying options, which it really recommended. It will save you time, money on stamps and ensure that your bills are paid on time. We also use an old fashioned accordian folder to file the bills and receipts each month. It makes it a lot easier to sort and find things at the end of the year for taxes.

I don't get away without having to do ANYthing with bill paying however. I do have a business and I am in charge of paying bills for that. Luckily, I don't have too many bills to keep track of, so that makes it easy easier. I have a monthly credit card bill. My other bills such as personal liability insurance and my two professional organizations that I am apart of, send annual bills. I make a note in my planner to pay them ahead of time and I do. Pretty simple. I also keep all of the records of these bills so I can use them as write offs at tax time.

This Week's Goals:

1. Find one good location to pay your bills. Keep it stocked with everything you need. (stamps, pens, calculator, return address labels, etc) We use our office desk for this.


2. Schedule time to pay your bills and check accounts. Some people do this as soon as they get paid. My husband does it weekly so it doesn't get overwhelming. Be sure to pay your bills on time. If you can't, write to your creditor to let them know your situation. Send them at least a small amount every month until you can pay in full.



3. Keep a filing system for your paid bills so you can access them easily if need be.



Tips


Set goals to pay down your debt. Start with the highest interest rate debt first such as credit cards and work down from there. Look at your spending each month and find areas where you can cut back (such as Starbucks). Take that money and put it into a savings account. You will be surprised to see how much you can save and enjoy seeing it grow each month. 


Well, that does it for another organize now post. I hope the information has been helpful. As always, I love hearing from you. Feel free to comment below with your tips and to share how it's been going for you so far. you can also link up to your own blog to share with your readers or with your social media account.

Next week: Organize Your Receipts and Taxes! Good timing since tax day is quickly approaching.

Have a great day!

Rebecca 










2 comments:

  1. 99% of my bills are set up for auto pay or the utility company takes it out of our account directly. It's really nice b/c you don't have to worry about forgetting something--just have to make sure you have the $ in your bank account when it's due!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great comment, Tami! Automatic bill paying is great and saves money on stamps and also saves time. Like you said, it is just important to make sure you have the money in your account to pay the bill:)

    ReplyDelete

 
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