Can we say I am a dork
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Can we say I am a dork
| Fri, 12-12-2008 - 8:50am |
How man of you have the problem of just not paying a bill on time?
SIGH...this is a habit I need to break.
| Fri, 12-12-2008 - 8:50am |
How man of you have the problem of just not paying a bill on time?
SIGH...this is a habit I need to break.
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Teresa,
You and I are from the same cloth. I need to program alarms into my BB so I can remember.
I am so glad I am not the only one who has done this or deal with it.
I've avoided this except on very odd and seldom occasions. I will say that I do 'insure' against this by setting up autopayments as much as possible and by coordinating due dates on the ones that require my attention. You can ask creditors to move payment due dates so that maybe you get due dates correlated around one or two times per month. My credit cards and student loan are all due around the middle of the month so I only have to remember to deal with stuff before the 15th.
Peg
On-line banking has made a huge difference for me with regards to this.
I love walking from the mailbox to the computer, bringing up BofA's bill pay screen, and entering the amount and date next to the payee name. It takes less than 3 minutes. This assumes that I have budgeted for the item, of course. If it's an expense that is not budgeted, I transfer the money over from savings at the same time.
I'm not good at going back and looking at piles of mail, which used to be necessary. That's why I had the unfortunate experience of missing a few bills per year, in the past. With this system, it's been a couple of years now since I was late on anything.
Recreating Myself
Many find it helpful t set up automatic payment online.
I was great about it until I had my first baby, and then nothing went right! She was sooooo needy - always hungry and never slept for more than 10 mins at a time - LITERALLY! I couldn't even shower or eat, let alone pay bills.
Eventually I moved to better systems, such as making sure I had a clean place to pay the bills that was handy and in the right location for me to deal with it emotionally, but even so, until I did those automatic deductions, there was a risk that the bills wouldn't get paid.
I do try to sit down every week or every other week and reconcile the checkbook, etc., but when I don't get to, at least I know the bills are being paid.
Kelly
I do it this way to.
I get paid biweekly. I have 3 bills that are biweekly, 7 that are monthly and 1 does this wierd 58-61 day billing cycle (so I have a rough idea when its due, but don't know for sure until the statement comes in!). The moral of the story is that I NEVER know how much money is needed out of each check for bills! So I grab a calendar and mark the date for all recurring bills. Then I mark my paydays. For each payday, I count ahead 2 weeks and figure out what bills are due and for how much.
Bex -
ooh! me too!
I don't have a reason for this, we just don't seem to be able to get it together. The odd thing is, we will go months paying everything on time, and then one month, it will just slide. For no apparent reason, we will just sit on a bill for a week before thinking about paying it.
We have the money. We have the time. We're working on this.
I spent years sticking my head in the sand. It was just too depressing to face the reality that I had too many bills and not enough cash. I payed a credit card late every month for years and I recently realized that I could have had the damn thing payed off by now if I just would have payed the measly 25 dollars a month on the 3rd. After much struggle and hardship I have faced the fact that if I pay everything on time, no matter how hard it is, then I save myself BIG money! So I make it my #1 priority now to make sure I know when things are due because it's just too depressing to be charged 5, 10, even 50 dollars because something was late. That could be grocery money. But this isn't easy. I'm busy...3 kids, a piano teacher, the holidays, so I could forget bills not only because I don't even want to think about the bills, but just because I have so little free time. So I've developed this system.
First of all, I bought myself the quicken software which has been a lifesaver! I programmed all of my recurrent bills and when a bill comes in that only happens once like a doctors payment, I put that in too. I can see on a calendar when everything is due and I check the software everyday, like checking my email. I can see what's in each bank account, what's due that week. Most of my bills are automatic as well. I hate making everything automatic because it's hard when you're short on cash but you have to account for that bill that's going to be taken out whether you want it to or not. Then - every Thursday which is payday, I sit down at the computer and look at what I need to pay out that week.
I take an hour
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