Can you pay your bills? Knowing how to keep track of your bills and payments plays an important part in managing your finances. Making your payments on time helps to impact other areas of your finances like your ability to borrow money to buy your dream home or dream car. Also losing track of your bills and payments can lead to late payment fees which may result in penalties such as interest fees and higher interest rates when you are ready to borrow money. 

In order to keep track of how to pay your bills, you first need to learn how to be organized. Here’s how:

1. Create a list of bills to be paid- This involves creating a list of bills that need to be paid monthly or yearly. Ensure that you write down how much they are and when they are due. It’s good to plan ahead for those bills that are yearly or irregular. Some examples of bills to be paid monthly are rent or mortgage, utilities, car loans, etc. And examples of bills to be paid yearly are car insurance, property taxes, and homeowners insurance. Create this list and check it twice because if you don’t know your money then you can’t grow your money.

2. Add your bills to your calendar-  Add your bills to a paper planner or digital calendar including the amount due. By leveraging the benefits of technology you can get text or email reminders when your bills are due so you can ensure that you make the payments on time.

3. Set reminders to pay your bills- This is to ensure that you don’t forget to pay your bills. If you are using a digital calendar this can be done when adding the bill to the calendar. Otherwise, you can use apps on your phone such as the calendar app to set reminders.

4. Put your bills on autopay- By automating your finances, you are setting up your bill payments and account savings to be paid every month automatically. This ensures that they are always paid on time to avoid costly late fees. This can be done through your service providers such as credit card companies or utility companies. Another way is to set up bill payment through your bank that will issue the payment to your service provider on your behalf. However, this is not a set it and forget it activity, ensure that from time to time you check on payments and make any adjustments if needed.

5. Create a bill organization system- Organization is key! One of the ways of organizing your bills is to convert them to a digital format of your bills. This can be done by opting to receive your bills via email. By doing so you are able to create folders and once paid you can transfer bills to the “PAID” folder. Not all of us are quite ready to switch to digital bills, which is just fine. Instead, you can have a specific place or folder for storing your paper bills. Once paid you can transfer them to a paid pile. 

Please keep in mind that there is no one right way to keep track of your bills, as long as you find something and stick with it. Also don’t burden yourself with over track your bills, focus on the bigger picture, and ensure all major monthly payments are consistently made on time. Creating discipline around your monthly bills and payments will develop the habit of consistency which is absolutely critical to becoming a successful investor and building wealth faster. Get started today because wealth waits for no one.