September 18th, 2007 
NCN
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If you struggle, like I do, to stay organize, consider using the following tools. Each one will help you to remember when to pay your bills, send in quarterly taxes, renew your automobile tags, etc.
- Pen and Paper
Print out a blank calendar and mark the day of the month when certain bills are due. Take a look at your calender, say every Monday, and schedule payments as needed. If you have annual payments, list them at the bottom of the calendar and check them off as you go through the year.
- Spreadsheet
Same principal, but instead of printing out a calendar, create a simple spreadsheet using your office software.
- Online – Email Reminders
Online calendars, like Google Calendar, can keep you up-to-date and will even email you reminders or send instant messages to your cell phone. While I like this service, I personally prefer to have a printed calendar, because I’m ‘old school’.
- Online – Email Bills
Many companies and banks will email your bills, straight to your inbox. If you are comfortable with this setup, sign-up with your billers and go paperless. (According to spell-check, “billers” is not a word – but you know what I mean.)
- Email Reminders
Prefer to manually setup email reminders? Check out MemoToMe. Schedule weekly emails and you’ll always know when bills are due.
- Online Bill Pay
If you use online bill pay, you can schedule your payments, and infomercial style, “set-it-and-forget-it”. Personally, I could never, ever use this method. Why? I don’t like the idea of “auto-anything”. I actually enjoy the process of looking at each bill, examining it, and making a payment. I use online bill-pay, but I manually enter each payment. (I also never allow “pull-transactions” – giving a credit card company access to my checking account just seems ‘wrong’.) But, if you are a normal person, and not crazy, like me, you’ll probably enjoy automating the process. 
- Marker and Envelopes
Alright, here’s the quick-and-easy method. Whenever you receive a bill in the mail, open it up, find the due date, put the bill back in the envelope, and write the due date on the outside of the bill. Write it big and bold and then arrange all of your bills by due date. Every Monday, sort through your bills and pay the ones that are coming due.
Banks and credit card companies make billions from late fees. Stop padding their pockets! Pay your bills, early and on time. A little bit of organization can go a long way towards making your life much, much easier.
Do you have ideas for how we can improve our organizational skills? Leave a comment and let us know. If you are a blogger, write a post about organizing your finances, and contact me. I’ll be more than happy to link to your post.
Click here to read all of the 33 Days And 33 Ways To Save Money And Reduce Debt posts.
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[...] Day 18 of 33 Days And 33 Ways To Save Money And Reduce Debt: Remember Due Dates [...]
[...] Ramanujam wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptBanks and credit card companies make billions from late fees. Stop padding their pockets! Pay your bills, early and on time. A little bit of organization can go a long way towards making your life much, much easier. … [...]
One of the things I used to do to keep myself on track sort of combined a few of these. I would keep my bills’ due dates in a calendar application called “pcal” which prints decent, if plain, calendars in postscript format. I’d then use ghostscript to convert the postscript calendar to a JPeg. I’d use that JPeg file as my desktop wallpaper.
I’m also scared of automating. I don’t want money leaving the account unless I’m involved. Well, I automate a monthly donation to a particular charity, but I know when it comes and keep an eye on it.
I use Google Calendar. Set the reminder early and mail it out once I get it.
A lot of bills nowadays can be split up, so you can make weekly/biweekly payments to each of your bills as you get paid. That way you have a set amount you pay per week, which makes it extremely easy to budget. This of course works best with online bill pay. I am so used to paying every thursday when I get paid, that I wouldn’t do it any other way. Basically, I get paid, I pay my weekly contribution to my bills, and budget the rest for savings and/or spending on non-bill things. That way I never have a big bill once a month!
Oh, and if I have an annual bill or something irregular, I’m still budgeting for it every Thursday when I get paid, I just “pay” that bill into my savings account.
I use a spreadsheet (one of many) to keep track of due dates, amounts, dates paid, and other info. I open it daily so that there’s no surprises and so that I can plan ahead.
I also really don’t like automation of my finances, aside from automatic savings (ING, I love you!). For some reason, I really like opening the bill, writing the check immediately (or going online) and paying it the same day. There’s just something immensely gratifying about paying a bill weeks before it’s due. In fact, most months, all my bills due for the entire month are paid before the month even begins. I like that.
[...] and the sidebar is a list of all the lists I have there…. I kind of do already. NCN asks in Day 18 of 33 Days and 33 Ways to Reduce Debt and Save Money – how do you keep track of due dates? And I say… with a list of [...]
[...] having here is that we’d save a good bit of money by simply being more organized. Well, this post makes it easier for me to remember due [...]
[...] presents Day 18 of 33 Days And 33 Ways To Save Money And Reduce Debt: Remember Due Dates posted at No Credit [...]
I use a program called Active Desktop Calendar, which works much like Outlook’s calendar but puts everything right on the desktop (like a wallpaper). It gives me a side column of upcoming events and I can add tasks and notes to it. It works great for me.
I too use the google calendar, but only thought of that after having used it for work appointments for more than a year. Because I’m in it every day, I don’t have to send myself reminders. Instead, I have repeating due dates, and the day I pay bills, I go in, view just the bill appointments (this feature is why we love google calendar – you can do this by searching or having several color-coded caledars in one) and then I delete everything i’ve paid (”only this instance”), it makes me feel great to see them disappear.
[...] September 18 – Remember Due Dates [...]