You're committed to attacking your debt issues with
intensity, but you're having trouble wrapping your brain
around exactly how you're going to accomplish this
Herculean feat when you can't even figure out what's due
when or how you can stretch your cheeseburger paycheck to
cover your steak dinner budget. How can you attack your
account balances when you don't have a manageable system
that's simple and easy to access? We're going to fix that
today.
I call this the Clipboard for Cash method and it's a
decidedly low-tech solution. First, use your high-tech
computer to print off a couple of calendars - one for this
month and one for next month. Next, attach them to a good
old-fashioned clipboard. Now comes the fun part.
Gather up your stack of bills and sort through them
individually, placing them into an ordered stack based on
due-date, with the most pressing bills on top. This may
sound like a simple, even juvenile system, but the idea
here is to save you money, not look like the most
sophisticated person you know.
Now as you go through the bills, write down the name
of the creditor and the amount due on the calendar on its
corresponding due date. When you're finished, you should
have a good idea of what your bill situation is as far as
when bills are due. Now you can fill in the rest of your
monthly bills - pre-authorized payments that come out of
your checking account on an automatic basis, lunch money
for the kids' lunches at school, etc.
Now you've got all your bills written down in a
centralized location and all the bills are together. Place
the stack of bills on the clipboard and the system is ready
to run. A single glance at the clipboard will tell you when
your bills are due, so there's no more guesswork on your
part or having to remember your bill schedule. You also
have the peace of mind of knowing that you have the
envelope and the bill together so you don't have to search
for them.
Here's where the savings kicks in. On payday, you know
at a glance what has to go out, so you can pay bills in a
fraction of the time. Any money you have left in your
checking account right before payday should be applied to a
bill - any bill - so that you're paying on something and
leaving yourself almost destitute.
When you pay an pre-authorized bill, flip your calendar
page to the next month and fill it in and as bills trickle
in (or flood, whichever is the case) through the month you
can write them down, and you're good to go.
If you're more comfortable keeping the transactions on
your computer, you can do that as well. The key element of
this plan isn't to develop a difficult system, because it's
a lot like programming your VCR: If it's too difficult you
just won't do it. And then you can kiss your savings
goodbye.
Now that you've taken some proactive steps to get your
budget under control by figuring out what you have going
out - and when - you'll be more confident in your
bill-paying and much less likely to miss a due date.
Avoiding late fees shouldn't be a problem for you now that
you've got this plan in place.
----------------------------------------------------
Darrin Roseborsky is a Refinance Specialist with OMAC
Mortgages, seminar speaker and president of
CanadianHomeRefinance.com. Darrin shows people how to
MAXIMIZE their equity PROPERLY and how to choose options
that make the MOST SENSE for their situation! An example of
exactly how this works, is at:
http://www.canadianhomerefinance.com
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