People can have several bills to pay each month. They will have the mortgage, the electric bill, the water bill, the gas bill, their auto insurance bill, their cell phone bills and the list goes on. There can even be times when a bill is missed and the payment is late. This can be dangerous for something like the car insurance because one missed payment can mean the insurance will be cancelled. What would be a tremendous help would be to simplify the finances. Following are ten ways to do this effectively.
1. Make Electronic Payments
Setting up electronic payments means that people don’t have to do anything. Their payments will be taken from their bank accounts when they are due and they can never be late. This frees up the time they would have had to take writing checks and mailing these bills every month; it also saves money on stamps.
2. Take Advantage of Electronic Statements
Receiving statements in the mail means that people have to keep track of a lot of paperwork. A better plan would be to have electronic statements. The company would be happier with this arrangement because they save on administrative costs, and the customer can keep everything in a convenient place online.
3. Use Online Bill Pay
Online bill pay with the bank makes it possible to pay the bills online. This makes managing finances simple like in the previous example.
4. The Old Tried and True Spending Budget
Creating a budget helps people tremendously who don’t know where their money is going every month. A budget is a plan, and people who make a list of all the necessary bills they have to pay know they will be able to pay those bills when they give them the highest priority.
5. Reduce the Amount of Money Spent Each Month
When creating a budget, people might notice that they have too many different types of bills to pay each month. This can mean that they will have an unmanageable number of spending categories in their monthly budget. If the budget is too complicated, it’s not going to benefit people who want to make their finances simpler. They need to keep all of their spending categories to a minimum in order to make the budget strategy work.
6. Consolidate Accounts
A big help is to consolidate accounts which will keep them all in one place. For example, some people have more than one savings account. If all of these savings accounts are under one bank then these accountholders can log into that one bank and see all of their accounts in one place making managing money much easier.
7. Set Up a Level Pay System for Utilities
When people set up level pay for their utilities, they know that they will be billed around the same amount of money each month. Utilities can be unpredictable and in some months, people can use more than of one type of utility than another. For example, in the summer people tend to use their air conditioning more often. Level bill pay will help keep them from overspending during these months.
8. Give Things Away
By giving things away, the house is much less cluttered and there are fewer things to manage.
9. Purchase a House that Fits the Family’s Needs
When purchasing a new home, be sure that the house is exactly what will be needed and nothing more or less. This will ensure that the mortgage payments will be easily manageable and that the maintenance on the house isn’t overwhelming.
10. Make a List of Things to Accomplish
Making a change from a disorganized state to a more organized one can take a little time. Before getting started on this project, people can make a list of their most important goals down to the least and finish each goal before moving on to the next. Setting a time when they would like to have the goal accomplished will ensure that the item gets done and can be crossed off of the list.
