(See also: Get Rid of and Avoid Late Fees) First, the Consequences Whether you miss a bill deadline once in a blue moon or if you are consistently late and behind in paying your bills, it is time to get your financial life back on track and realize what the consequences are of paying bills late. Better they charge it to my credit card and I have time to verify it before any money leaves my hands.There may be many reasons why your bills have gone late. Now, I refuse to give our banking information to anyone unless there is absolutely no other way. Twenty years ago when auto billing was first available here I used it for our gas bill and thought it was great to avoid writing and mailing a check. Kind of hard to straighten things out from another continent. Either way you won’t be on the other side of the planet when you discover that an auto pay for a bill was taken from your account and they mistakenly charged you $500 or $5000 instead of $50. If you’ll be away a long time you can look at the spreadsheet for the next few weeks and set up an auto payment of the expected amounts to happen while you are away. Bills continue to be paid on time while you are away and you can deal with the credit card bill the minute you are home. This process works really well when we’re on vacation. If there’s a dispute about a charge it’s on the card (where I have a little time to arrange a refund) rather than missing from my bank account. This system means nothing automatically comes out of my bank account without first being reviewed, but also no bill is ever missed or paid late. electricity) I put in a reasonable estimate for each month based on the past 5yrs and then replace the estimate with the actual number once I have it. For me the key is having a year of our planned spending laid out in advance. If it comes through as a different amount, then I log in and get the details of the invoice. In most cases it’s the identical amount every month. All the bills arrive on the same day every month, or at least the same week so it no surprise what was charged that week, I’m really just checking that it happened as planned. Every week I cross check what was processed on the card against my spreadsheet indicating what was expected that week, then I pay off everything on the card with one online transfer from my bank account. Everyone gets paid on time and I only have one bill to pay. We have virtually everything auto charging to our credit card. Maybe I’m just being a little nostalgic again.ĭo you get a mixture of physical and electronic statements? How do you keep track of your recurring monthly bills? It feels good to be physically part of the paying of my bills, even if it is simply by pushing a button. Though I’ve used them in the past, I still avoid them if possible. I know it’s silly, but I just don’t trust them. I don’t pay anything using automatic withdrawals. My process is driven from my expense worksheet - without looking at a single statement. When I get paid on the 15th, I take care of all the remaining bills for the month. On the first of the month, I pay all the bills that are due from the 1st to the 14th.
I process bills twice a month, which coincides with when I get paid from my primary career as a software engineer. By the time I’m filling out my expense worksheet, however, the amount due has already been posted to my online accounts. The only two that are variable are my gas and electric bills. Almost all of my expenses are the same amount from month-to-month, so that makes it pretty easy. It includes who the payment needs to go to, the day it’s due, and the amount. To keep track of everything, I use an expense worksheet (which I create at the beginning of each month). How I Keep Track of My Bills Without Statements When I get a statement, I examine it to ensure everything looks correct, then I discard it. I’m not ignoring my bills I just decided to stop using my statements as the reminders to pay them. But with my new mixture of electronic and paper notifications, it’s harder to keep track of what needs to be paid and when. I used to have a stack of paper bills in a basket on my computer desk. Also, for some reason, I like to get a receipt confirming I made the payment. The only bill I pay by check is my mortgage - and that’s only because I drive by my lender every day. I have the ability to pay each of them online: either by automatic withdrawal, or through a payment portal. I still get a paper copy of some bills in the mail, but most now show up in my email inbox. OK, so maybe it wasn’t that long ago, but doing bills like that certainly seems like something out of a storybook these days. I’d sit down with the checkbook, a stack of bills, and a book of stamps… Then I’d hop on my horse and ride into town to bring them to the post office. I remember how I used to do bills each month.