Bill paying can be very stressful. Not only because of the fact that you are paying for services that you already received, but also because of the many difficult situations that may occur for example when you forget to pay a certain bill and you are obliged to pay late fees.
People are often disorganized when it come to bill paying. Sometimes they are postponing payments until the moment, they owe a little fortune to banks and service providers. Good organizational skills are essential for personal finances as well as for company ones, so we decided to share a few ways to make your bill paying more organized, transparent and easier above all.
Keep All of Your Pending Bills Together
If you receive bills by regular mail, leave them on the table until they all arrive, and then place them in one of the envelopes they arrived in. After you pay your bills, place receipts in another envelope made exclusively for that purpose. If you on the other hand receive them by e mail, create a separate folder on your e mail account where you will leave all of your pending bills. After you pay them, simply delete the mail, and place payment confirmation e mail that you will receive in another folder made only for payment confirmations.
This proved to be the most efficient way of storing pending bills, because if you place each bill in its own folder, you will need to look in ten places to find them all and by doing that on your e mail account you are risking to delete some of your important bills or place them in junk folder.
Have a Bill Paying Day
Bill paying usually requires you to go to the bank, unless you pay your bills online (which we will mention in the next paragraph). This cost you both time and money, and that’s why it is advisable, to pay all of your bills in one day. Of course you may expect a very bitter day, once a month, but a citizen’s gotta do, what a citizen’s gotta do.
Pay Your Bills Online
Not all bills are payable this way, but with paying online at least some of them you will save money on commission and service costs. Most banks don’t charge any additional costs for this way of paying and that’s why you should use this option whenever you got the chance. Setting you bill paying to automatic mode, where money is automatically withdrawn from your account, when bill arrives is even less stressful. This way you will relieve yourself from worrying and you will never pay late fees again. Service providers love this way of paying too, because it enables them to save money on manpower.
Pay Everything on a Bundle
It is always better to subscribe to package service offer, than to pay for each service separately. This is a win-win situation for both service companies as well as the consumers. For example you can merge your phone, cable and internet bill and pay them all together, if you are subscribed to all those services at one provider. Service providers also prefer this option and they will definitely reward you for paying everything on a bundle, with some extra minutes on the phone, giga-bytes or one or a few premium cable channels for free. This example is only one in a pool of different package and bundle paying options. For example in Australia, this paying system is so advanced, that companies offer parents to pay all of their children’s school and college expenses, including tuition fees, books, student dorm, with school easy pay system, which enables them to pay all this with up to 12 monthly installments, without any interest.
Start Using Personal Finance App
There are plenty of different personal finance apps that can provide great help with bill paying or anything else that concerns your personal finances. There are both free and paid apps and. some of them come with free trial periods or are free up to 100 or more transactions. These are some of the best apps you can find on today’s market:
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Mint Bills – this is an addition to the regular Mint, a.k.a. the most famous personal finance app in the world. Mint Bills, can pay your bills automatically and it also monitors all of your bank and credit card accounts.
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BillTracking – iPhone app that can pay all kinds of bills from gym subscriptions, to car loan payments.
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HomeBudget – paid personal finance app that you can get for as low as $4.99, it comes with great design and very functional layout.
With following all these tips you will not need to pay late fees ever again, and bill paying will become if not enjoying, than at least bearable. Paying bills on time and with no stress involved is one of the ways to live a more productive and enjoyable life.
