Keeping Track of Money and Payments

Jun
2007
21

posted by on Ramblings

5 comments


Some people are good at this and some people are just horrible at it. With so much going on it is hard sometimes to keep track of your expenses and payments. Also when you work exclusively online most of your money comes in around the same time each month so you basically have one payday all month. So you need to manage your money well. When I first started managing my expenses I was not organized and ended up missing a lot of payments resulting in late fee’s etc. So here are some tips for keeping track of your money and payments.

Setup a Payment Spreadsheet
I have an Excel spreadsheet where I have all of my payments each month listed and the day that they are due on. This is simply a checklist. After I have paid each bill I mark paid beside it. This way I know it is paid and never forget. Also having the dates that the bills are due makes sure that I will never miss a payment.

Online Banking
I do all of my banking online. If your bank does not offer online banking you should look for another bank. Online banking is so convenient because you can check your balance anytime and see a list of all of your transactions. You can also do things like transfer balances between accounts.

Consolidate Bills
If you are able to consolidate bills into just 1 bill that makes things even easier because you only have to deal with 1 big bill each month. I am able to do this with my American Express card. I can add things like my phone bill and even Netflix so that American Express will pay them automatically each month. A lot of banks and credit cards do offer this, if you can do it, it is definitely recommended.

These are some of the things that I do to keep track of my money and payments. It makes things easy to manage and fast so I can devote more time to my work, not paying bills.

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  • Greg Baden

    I’m glad that I don’t have to worry about too many bills right now. The bills that I usually get are via snail mail just because it’s an easy reminder for me if it’s sitting on my desk.

  • http://www.shawn-knight.net Shawn Knight

    I started doing detailed Excel files for each month this year. It is such a good idea; shows exactly where your money is being spent and like you said, allows you to keep track of bills and when they are due.

  • http://www.obsidianprofile.com Sean

    I’m doing the same, but only with paychecks so far. I haven’t started keep track of expenses in that much detail.

  • http://www.lithman.net David Lithman

    You can also keep track of all your expenses using a program like Quicken or Money.

  • http://www.derekbeau.com DerekBeau

    I do all of my banking and bill paying online as well and Excel spreadsheets do come in handy. I prefer them to more robust money software packages because they are so simply yet flexible.

    For bill payment reminders I usually just store all of my notification emails in my inbox with an “urgent” start on them.