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Here’s one more example of a simple system to keep financial records.

Developing an effective system for bill pay

Another area that many people struggle to get organized (and stay organized!) with is bill paying.  For most people, it can seem like there is a new statement coming in the mail every day – and everything is due on a different day.  Since no one sits around waiting to pay the bills, it's easy for life to distract us and cause us to make a late payment here or there.

If you tend to be forgetful of when the bills are due, you might want to look into a bill paying system that sends you email reminders or text messages on your cell phone.   Basically, you’d set up an alert notification system for yourself; it’s quite likely that many financial institutions and companies you are doing business with may already have a system that helps out in this regard.  You can set up most bills to be paid automatically out of the bank account you designate, or you can put everything on a credit card and make a single payment at the end of each month to cover all of your expenses.

One bill paying method that typically doesn't work for anyone, is keeping the bills on the counter or desk until you're ready to pay them.  After they sit there for a day, you don't even realize they're there half the time!   Plus, the clutter just keeps accumulating and before long, it becomes a huge bear to clear it up.  So here’s an idea to help you avoid falling into this clutter-bug behavior: set up one area of your home or office where you keep all of your paperwork, and organize your bills according to their due dates.  It helps if you attend to your bills right away to avoid letting stacks of paper grow unabated into permanent heaps on your desk.

For more on financial organization, check these additional ideas to organize and simplify your finances.