![]() Your mind will be more attuned to the task at hand, plus, when you prioritize bill paying, you’ll get a better grasp of your finances overall. Let’s face it: it pays to process bills in an orderly fashion. Choose a bill-paying process that works for you. You may also want to keep a recycling bin and shredder handy to make disposing of a paper a breeze. Stock your bill paying center with the following office supply basics: calculator, pencils, pens, rubber eraser, stapler, staples, paper clips, envelopes, address labels, postage stamps, sticky tabs, and notepad or scratch paper. If you run out of stamps or address labels when you’re paying bills, you can easily add it to your shopping or errands list. Plus, having all of these office supplies in once place makes it easier to replace items as you use them. Having all the items you need to calculate, research, and post a payment makes the bill paying process so much more streamlined. You can carve out a small area in your home office, a side countertop in the kitchen, or in cabinet drawer in your dining or living room. Make paying bills as easy as possible by creating a bill paying area in your home. Organize a bill paying center in your home. Outgoing – A place to store bills before they are mailed in a street mailbox or at the post office. To-Be Filed – Bills that have been paid and are ready to be filed in a filing cabinet or other filing system. This is also a place to hold bills if you are waiting for deposits to clear at your bank. The latter is if you have a question, concern, or issue with a bill, and have called or made contact with the company or organization in question. Paid – Bills that have just been paid and/or are in the process of being paid. To-Be Paid – Bills that have just arrived and that need to be paid. No matter which method you use, you’ll need to set aside the following four separate locations: If you receive bills or statement alerts via email, you can create folders in your email account and manually move email messages into the folders as needed. If you process paper bills, you can store them in a series of file folders, baskets, boxes, or containers. ![]() Now, dedicated bill storage locations don’t have to be anything fancy. It looks a little something like this: bill arrives, bill is paid, bill is filed, and bill is mailed. As you can see, it’s important to address each of these stages so bills don’t accidentally get lost or misplaced. What’s a bill life cycle? It’s just the natural progression a bill will take as soon as it arrives in your home. Create proper storage locations for bills.Ī convenient way to keep bills contained in your home is to simply have a dedicated storage locations for the life cycle of your bills. You may also want to include more details in your calendar, such as when specific bills arrive in the postal mail at your address, payment grace periods, and how long a bill takes to post to your account after payment. You can use a wall or digital calendar to track dates. Track your monthly bill due dates so you can plan out your expenses and spending accordingly. Use a monthly calendar to track due dates. Once you’ve made a list of all of your household accounts, you can you can then proceed to locate and round-up the most current bills in your home. You can either do this from memory (you might immediately recall you have monthly cell phone, cable, and electricity bills to pay each month, for example) or do some targeted research around the home.Ĭheck your desk and inbox for current bills and statements, review your bank statements and online accounts, checkbooks, and credit card statements for an idea of all of your billing accounts. You can get things started by doing some brainstorming to create a comprehensive list of household bill accounts along with their due dates. ![]() In this post, I offer a few simple ways to organize your bills so you can pay and file them in an orderly fashion.ĭo keep in mind, this is just one of many methods when it comes to organizing bills.įeel free to modify, change, and adapt this framework so it suits your personal needs and preferences.įirst things first, if you want to organize bills, you’ve got to have a handle on what you’re organizing. The best part about organizing bills is that once you set a system up, the rest falls into place.Īll you have to do is to maintain the system on a regular basis, and you’re good to go. Organizing bills should be one of the top organization projects in your home if you’re looking to keep your finances and business affairs in order. Do you have trouble keeping your household bills organized?Īre you interested in getting a handle on your paperwork? ![]()
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