Organizing Your Bills

Did you know that 1 in 3 adults in America don’t pay their bills on time?  Is one of those adults you?  I hate to admit it, but sometimes it is me.  I recently opened my gas bill to find that I was 3 months past due.  I frantically began searching my payments and previous bills.  I found that the first month, the payment went to the wrong company and the second month, I put the unpaid bill into the wrong stack.  What a nightmare.  I am not really surprised.  

This is what my desk looks like on any given day:

Once a week I take all the toys and other collectables off my desk, but they always seem to come back.  

What happens if you don’t pay your bills on time?  Well you can pay late fees, penalties, and interest.  Get far enough behind like I did with the gas, they can discontinue your service which can be costly to restore.  Consistently being behind on your bills can even hurt your credit score.  So how do you get organized?

• Dedicate a space for sorting your mail and sort it on a regularly.  For example, instead of tossing the mail on the first flat surface which changes daily, have a specific place to put it.  This keeps bills from ending up all over the house. 

• Sort the mail regularly.  This doesn’t have to be every day, but should be once a week.   Recycle the junk and sort bills in your sorting system.

• Have a file system to sort bills.  You can sort bills by type or by due date.   You may find it helpful to group bills by pay date, for example have a folder for bills when you are paid on the 15^th and on the 30^th (use the dates that make sense for your pay cycle)

• Consider setting some of your bills up for autopay such as your mortgage.   This will leave you with less to sort.   

However a system is only as good as its user, so once you decide on a system, stick with it.  It only takes a little while for your system to become your habit.