Cutting things from your budget can be pretty painful for some people. Denying yourself or your family of life’s luxuries is never easy, but is sometimes necessary. However, one expense that you’ll be glad to be rid of is finance charges incurred due to late payments. By taking care to pay your bills on time you can completely eliminate these from your monthly budget.
You may be thinking that saying that you’re going to avoid late fees is a lot easier than actually avoiding them. Maybe you plan to pay all of your bills on time, but you forget to mail them. Or maybe your problem is finding time to sit down and wade through your monthly bills. Whatever the reason for your late fees, unless you actually don’t have the funds to pay yours, there’s no reason why you can’t get away from them. Try using one of these methods to streamline your bill payments and make late fees a thing of the past.
Group your payments into one or two groups each month. The due dates of some bills are set in stone: utilities and rent payment dates aren’t usually negotiable. On the other hand, however, credit car payments and car payment can often be moved to a more convenient date. Take a look at your monthly payments and see what type of changes you can make. If you only have to sit down to “do the books” once or twice a month, you’ll be less likely to forget to take care of something.
Make a list of recurring payments and tack it up on the wall over your desk. Mentally ticking each expense off your list as you pay it, will help you keep track of anything that still needs to be paid each month.
Look into using an online bill payment system to make it easier to pay your bills on time. Many banks offer this service free with a checking account. You can even elect to receive some bills directly through online banking and set up procedures to process those payments automatically. Paying the bills doesn’t get much simpler than this.
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1 response so far ↓
1 anon // Jun 16, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Timely post. Thank you! I would add that, although utility due dates are inflexible, you can fudge it by being roughly a month ahead (I know, but just overpay a little at a time). That way it doesn’t matter when you send the money to them, You’re always going to be OK. And Absolutely, CC companies will work with you to adjust due dates.
We’ve worked it so I pay EVERYONE a SET amount on the 28th. It’s been working for over a year, now. Biweekly paychecks, except everyone’s “allowances”, automatically -SAME DAY- go into savings; calculated total bills (automatically, on a spreadsheet) amount is transferred to a checking account, used for nothing else, on the 28th, the same day Paytrust (my third party Billpay service) sends out ALL payments. These have been prescheduled, preset amount, forever. Easy.
Since most bills are paid as EFTs I know within 2 days that they’ve been paid. There is also no chance of those annoying paper checks being overdrawn since I have a dedicated Bills Only account. Oddball bills, like medical, that Paytrust can’t handle are grouped in a folder, then I call/sign in and pay by CC on the 28th.
Mortgage is a Biweekly Plan (not particularly brilliant I know), EFT’d automatically on Payday, so again brainless.
If I had one really fixed pay date, e.g., rent, I would adjust all other bills so they could be paid on the same day. The hardest part is getting ahead enough, to put the plan into motion. You would essentially need to be about half a paycheck ahead for starters, but that can be done with a little hoarding, patience, and strategizing.
Once in motion, you just have to be sure you’ve scheduled all bills, like you say, using a checklist, or spreadsheet, whatever, then account for the payment amount in your monthly transfer amount. It takes only minutes to manage per month, once the system is in place.
Sorry, for long winded “sharing” but life is so much easier without worrying about, as you say, late fees!
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