Reaching a point where you’re financially free takes a lot of sacrifice and hard work. Juggling credit card and loan payments can be a daunting task. The key to keeping everything straight and making sure that the bills are being paid on time takes a fair bit of organization. While you can clear of your desk over the weekend and reduce some clutter, the clutter will return and you won’t stay organized. So what you need is a system that keeps everything in order. Putting a system in place will reduce your frustration and insure that bills are paid by their due dates.
After a while you’re sure to come up with a system, but I’ll share how my wife and I run ours.
1. All mail goes to one place (can be a folder or a bin) – items that need our attention are separated from everything else. We then order them by due dates. Nothing else goes here except for a pen, calculator and checkbook.
2. Pay the bills – 7 days before a bill is due we pay it online. While some might like to pay a little earlier, we find that 7 days is sufficient. You should set up a time to do this – it can be once a week or once a month, it doesn’t matter.
3. Scan the bill – after we pay each bill, we scan them. Each scanned bill is saved as a PDF file. Because hard drives fail, we always make a copy on a password protected USB flash drive.
4. Shred the bills – after the bill has been scanned and saved, it’s shredded. This reduces the amount of clutter we have around our apartment.
Anything that we don’t shred is placed in an accordion file folder.
Nothing else to it. Simple yet effective. Having a similar system in place can help you reduce clutter and headaches. This system frees us from worry and headaches. We know that the bills are paid on time and that we won’t be incurring any late fees.
Have a similar system in place? Let us know.
