Paying Bills
I’m sure I’m not alone when it comes to not enjoying paying bills, but I’ve found a few things that help me when it comes to managing all of the bills that we have going on. (There are a few times I forget to pay a bill or two, but given the number of bills and the many different due dates, I’ve found some solutions that mostly work).
I have two repeating events in my calendar called “Pay Bills” and each of them has a set of bills that are due either later in the month or next month. Each of these events repeats every four weeks and are two weeks apart from each other. When I created them, they lined up with pay days and they have worked well since.
I use these as reminders to check for any balances owed or check to make sure that I made these payments as I have been burned in the past from auto-reminder systems that fail. Plus, it prevents added noise in my email that I tend to read & archive fairly quickly.
There are a few instances that these simple reminders are not enough: Bill not ready, website down for maintenance, or potentially a larger bill than I can swallow at the time. In these instances, I have become accustomed to using a backup:
Anything that I cannot do on the date I spent some time paying bills, I set reminders to make sure that I don’t slip.
I like the reminders app for a few reasons:
- It mostly works
For what I need it to do (remind me to do X at time Y) - It’s easy to use
Many apps try too hard and create a tool that requires you to buy in more than you wish to afford. - It’s buggy (a feature)
The bugs in reminders are that involve setting reminder times and marking something as complete. The result of these two bugs mean that you get bothered more often to complete these items, and while annoying, it is a nice way to make sure that things happen. (Think of it like a nagging voice that has a mind of its own)
Beyond this, I sometimes leave notes, or paper versions elsewhere in my office or I may need to eventually call a company or service to ask them about a bill.
These one offs usually end up in their own queue:
Anything that I am unsure how long it will take, or involving other people, or something that isn’t as simple as going to a website and clicking a few buttons, gets a Trello task assigned with due dates and triaged according to my Trello flow.
I have a system that some might consider overkill when it comes to paying bills, but it’s something that works decently for me and is relatively inexpensive and ties into tools that I use for all other aspects of my life. I use calendar for scheduling things, reminders for other one-off reminders, and Trello for my bigger items that occupy the bulk of my time.
I’d be willing to try other systems and other ways to manage bill paying, but I think for now, I’ve got a bunch of Trello items to take care of that I should tackle.
