How Do You Pay Your Bills?
How do you pay your bills? I don’t mean to be so personal. But, this is the first question I ask clients when working with them in their home office. How you pay your bills is fine – from checks and envelopes all the way to automatic bill pay – it’s a personal choice. However, you feel comfortable is the way to go. But how you pay your bills makes a great difference in how long it takes and how much paperwork needs to be saved.
Paying by check and envelopes requires a lot more time. Not just manual time to write checks and address envelopes, but consider time in the mail for the postal service to deliver your payment. Also, work with the timing of when you will receive bills and schedule when you will send payments. If you’ve even been overwhelmed right before or right after a vacation with the backlog, you know what I mean. But for some, the physical act of ‘writing the check’ makes it more concrete. You need that to make it real. Good of you to know that. For many people, this is their comfort zone.
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Years ago, I got on the electronic bill-paying bandwagon. It saves me a lot of time and I love it. But I am a pretty organized person. Maybe it’s for you and maybe not. There are many options to pay electronically.
- Do you receive your bills electronically, through emails?
- Do you save them in some form? On your hard drive or in the cloud.
- Do you know which of your vendors archive them on their website for your reference?
- Do you pay through each individual vendor? Electric bill through the electric company, mortgage through a mortgage company, etc.
- Do you choose to do your bill-paying through your bank’s website?
It’s a personal preference. Whatever works for you is the right thing.
Do you want to try another bill-paying method? We can help you figure out what will work for your personal situation.
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Janet Schiesl
Janet has been organizing since 2005. She is a Certified Professional Organizer and the owner of Basic Organization.
She loves using her background as a space planner to challenge her clients to look at their space differently. She leads the team in large projects and works one-on-one with clients to help the process move quickly and comfortably. Call her crazy, but she loves to work with paper, to purge what is not needed and to create filing systems that work for each individual client.
Janet is a Past Board Member of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals and a Past President of the Washington DC Chapter of NAPO were she has been named Organizer of the Year and Volunteer of the Year.
Janet Schiesl
Janet has been organizing since 2005. She is a Certified Professional Organizer and the owner of Basic Organization.
She loves using her background as a space planner to challenge her clients to look at their space differently. She leads the team in large projects and works one-on-one with clients to help the process move quickly and comfortably. Call her crazy, but she loves to work with paper, to purge what is not needed and to create filing systems that work for each individual client.
Janet is a Past Board Member of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals and a Past President of the Washington DC Chapter of NAPO were she has been named Organizer of the Year and Volunteer of the Year.
I’ve been paying my bills electronically for years. For me, it’s the fastest way to get the process done. For many of my clients, though, they prefer to pay by check. They don’t yet trust the electronic system for paying bills. I’m happy your clients have you to help them with this process.
I agree it’s so much faster. I guess some people like the physical proof, for them it feels safer.
I switched to electronic and automatic bill paying for most of our bills. However, there are a few where I still write a check. Most of my clients now pay electronically. However, as Diane mentioned, a few still prefer paying by check. One area I could improve is getting less paper and more digital bills. Most vendors offer that option, but I still like receiving the paper version for a variety of reasons. There’s always room for improvement, and 2024 could be just the year to do better.
That’s very true Linda. The aspect of keeping a folder with the paper bills is something to keep a hold of it quick. I try to teach my clients to go through them every few year, and shred what’s not needed anymore.
I took a long time to come around to online bill-paying. One of my NAPO-Georgia colleagues finally convinced me, maybe around 2005? Other than my rent check, which I walk over to the leasing office monthly (while being sociable), I don’t write checks anymore, but I absolutely still keep a check register. I trust the digital path for paying bills, but for record-keeping, I’m an analog girl!
I receive all my bills on paper, but pay electronically. While I can pay my bills from my bank’s excellent online-bill pay, I prefer to go to each vendor’s website, log in, and pay that way to make sure that I don’t miss any information and so I can note any errors and nip them in the bud. I write down the confirmation number and date on my statement and file the paper away. (I am Paper Doll, after all.) Then I log the transaction in my check register. But I also check my bank app. I find it soothing to monitor everything closely, but I understand why most people prefer not to.
I may never feel comfortable with digital-only billing. I’ve spent the past five days dealing with a server migration for my website and email, and have lost several days of email (possibly permanently), so I like paper backup.
That’s wonderful Julie. Sorry to know about losing some days of emails. Keeping a paper file is not bad after all.
I’ve also been paying bills online for as long as I can remember. Most are delivered by email, but there are still a couple that come by mail. I should probably look at switching those too.
That would be something to add to 2024 list of things to do. Let’s make it paper free 2024. Happy New Year!