Your bills come each month whether you want them to or not. Setting them aside and dealing with them later can lead you to forget about their due dates. When this happens you end up having to pay a late fee. If you are willing to get organized, you can get your bills paid on time and never have to worry about incurring a late fee. This may take some time to set up, but only a few extra minutes per week to maintain.
Opening the Bills
Open your bills. Many bills come with unnecessary inserts that just take up room in your office. Remove any inserts and recycle them with the outer envelope immediately. This prevents clutter from piling up and taking your focus off of the bill itself. Now take the bill and place it under the fold of the return envelope.
Four Plastic Bins
Label four plastic bins so that each one represents a week of the month. You can simply label them "Week one," "Week two," "Week three," and "Week four." Now take your prepared bills and locate the due date. If the due date is the eighth of the month, the bill goes in week two's bin. If the due date is the 20th, the bill goes in the bin for week three. Do this with all of your bills and then stack the bins on top of each other in order. When week one comes, take your bills out and pay them. Then place the bin on the bottom of the pile so that week two's bills are ready for you the following week.
13 Pocket File Folder
Once your bills are paid, you still have your statements to deal with. You want to keep them organized as well so that you can quickly locate them if you need to. Purchase a 13 pocket file folder. Label the first 12 pockets with the months of the year. The final pocket can be labeled "taxes." Place your monthly statements into the pocket for that particular month. When the year is over, you can label the file folder with the year on the front and store it in case you ever get audited.
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