How to Organize Your Monthly Bills

When you pull your bills out of the mailbox, do you just dump them on the kitchen table? Do you leave them in a pile on your desk, only to find you've missed the due date on your charge card and now have to pay a late fee? Here's a way to organize those bills as they come in. You'll know what you owe, when a bill is due, and you need just a few moments a day to keep yourself, and your bills, organized.

1. In a filing cabinet place arrange twelve file folders, each labeled with a month of the year. Arrange them in order. This is where your bills are going to be stored after they are paid.
2. Using a calendar template, such as those found in Microsoft Publisher, print out each month of the year on a separate sheet of paper. Print them using the portrait orientation. Use (or create) a style that allows each date to be in a separate square.
3. Using a hole punch, punch out holes from the sheets and put them into a three ring binder. Naturally, you arrange them in order: January, February, March, until all the pages are in the notebook.
4. Take your pile of bills and stack them according to due date, with the soonest due on top. Take that top bill, find the corresponding due date on the appropriate monthly page. In that space for that date, write Discovery Card. For example, if your Discover card due date is August 31st, in the square marked 31 on the page for August, write Discovery Card.
5. Do this with all your bills. Now that they are all recorded, organize your bills in the notebook. All the bills that are due in August, for example, will be stacked on top of the August page. All the bills due in September will be stacked on top of the September page. Stack them in the order they are due with those due earliest in the month on top.
6. When a bill comes in take it directly to your notebook. Record the date it is due and put it in the appropriate stack, maintaining the order of due dates. When you pay a bill, put a check mark by it on your calendar.
7. Keep your copy or portion of the bill and mark it with date you paid it and how you paid for it, e.g. check 1301 or paid online.
8. Once a bill is paid, file it in the file folder for that month. This keeps the bills in a chronological order, should you need to retrieve them for any reason. Should there be a dispute about a bill, you are able to find it quickly and know when it was paid and how it was paid.
9. The notebook system allows you to visually track your bills. You can see at a glance when any bill is due without having to rummage through a pile and peak into envelopes. This will keep your monthly bills organized throughout the year, and you'll avoid those budget busting late fees.