Organize bills so you never have to worry about missing a bill or paying a late feeThese tips to organize bills for payments will reduce your stress, use your time more effectively, and reduce the money that you fork over in late fees. If you are like most people you are busy and on a tight budget. The last thing you want to receive as you sort your daily mail is to get an "Overdue notice" on your bills. Paying bills is one of the household duties that we dislike most yet it is a job that needs to be done.
Here we will show you ways to organize bill paying and reduce the clutter in your home.
Sort your mail every day.Sorting your mail each day stops the mail building up which which can cause you to miss paying bills on time.I sort my daily mail near the trash can, stripping away all the advertisements and only keeping the essentials. This reduces the paper clutter! Once this is done, put the bills into an designated bill area.
Designate an area to store your bills.One of the reasons why people are late paying their bill is because they have misplaced the bill. The amount of time that I used to spend looking for misplaced bills makes it time and money well spent to organize bills.Organizing your bills in a designated area can reduce your late fees. I use a standing file in the filing cabinet, in which I order the bills according to the date they need to be paid. I also have my envelopes, stamps and checkbook in the cabinet so that everything is there when I am ready to pay the bill.
Make bill paying a weekly routineThis tip I find really useful. I used to spend a quite 20 minutes once a week staying on top of my bills and balancing my checkbook. Now, I pay everything online, and in that 20 minutes I enter the dates that I want the money to transfer from my bank account. This works like a treat if you trust the online banking network.Track the bills that have or have not been paid. This can be done a number of ways. You can do it by hand, simply organizing your bills by date and writing the receipt number and date paid on the invoice when paid. Any unpaid bills will not have receipt numbers of a date paid on it. It can also be useful to move any paid bills into your home filing system. It is best for one person to pay the bills, so that you don't end up double paying the bills. Use technology to pay and track bills.Alternatively, you can keep track of your bills in excel or other software programs. I find using a money software package keeps track of the bills paid, upcoming bills and allows me to budget my expenses without wasting my time.Most money manager software programs will allow you to compile detailed reports of household expenses so that you can get a quick glance of the household finances with the press of a button. This type of money manger software can also be really useful if you are like most families who are working to a tight budget. If you can organize bill paying you can reduce your stress, use your time more effectively and never have to worry about missing a bill and paying the late fees. Organizing your home can reduce your stress and increase your effectiveness. A good 10-20% of your home can be your garage, which may be one of the most under-utilized spaces. Organize your garage and increase your garage storage to reclaim this valuable bit of real estate. If you work from home, see these ideas for organizing your home office. If you do most of your work at your desk, and it has been a while since you have seen your desk, then these desk tips could be useful for you. See our tips to control clutter.
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