Cutting down on expenses and organizing yourself can be overwhelming. It is hard to keep files and stay organized. There are a million papers everywhere and what if something gets lost! You have to request another bill or call to find out the due date and hope it’s not late! There are ways to climb out the paper clutter and make paying bills as well as keeping up with your finances much easier. The truth is the best way to start living debt free, is to live clutter free, because organization is the key to keeping on top of your finances! Here are some ways to help yourself get out of that clutter and into a good routine.
Switch To Paperless Billing:
Getting an email or notification in an app is a much easier way to keep bills, than keeping track of a million different pieces of paper each month. Create a folder in your email to keep those bills separate and organized until you sit down to deal with them.
Organize Your Bills On A Spread Sheet or Budgeting App:
If you decide to go with paperless billing or not, the next step towards living clutter free is to take all of your monthly expenses and organize them on to a spreadsheet or into an app. This will help you not only get rid of all of the paper bills (if you didn’t go paperless,) but it will also help you keep track of the due dates, how much you owe and what you have paid so far each month. You can even color code your spreadsheet, for example: upcoming bills can be: blue, paid bills can be purple, past due bills (hopefully we are eliminating these by organizing our payments!) can be: red and paid bills can be: green. This helps you know what you are looking at easily when you sit down to go over your finances.
Set Up Automatic Payments:
If you have an auto-pay, you never have to worry about missing a payment. If it’s a credit card and you want to pay more than the minimum each month, you can set it up so that not only the minimum goes through. You can always count on it being paid on time, and you never have to worry about forgetting to pay during a busy month! Some companies even give you a discount if you set up auto-pay through their website instead of through your banking app or just sending a check each month. A money saving option to look out for!
Consolidate:
A great way to pay down debt and help manage a large amount of credit card bills, is to consolidate into one bill for a lower monthly payment. You can even get a lower interest rate in many cases. There are a few options for consolidation.
Refinance: If you own your own home and you have built up your equity, you can consolidate your bills by paying them off using your equity and rolling the cost of the bills into your mortgage. This is a good option, because you will have one payment and the bills will no longer be on your line of credit. You will also get a lower interest rate for your mortgage than you would be paying on a credit card in most cases. The only downside to refinancing is that you will have closing costs. Very often this can be built into the equity payment and you won’t have to come out of pocket for it, but make sure that is the case before you close! Also make sure you will be able to make the new mortgage payment. This is your home on the line. You do not want to default on your mortgage!
Balance Transfer: If you have relatively good credit, but have more balances than you can pay off at once, a good way to consolidate and cut down on your interest payments, is to do a balance transfer. Credit card companies will often offer balance transfers and give you a promotional amount of time to pay off the amount with little to no interest. There is a small fee to be aware of, and make sure you pay the balance off before the promotional period is up, or the interest will start to accrue again.
Personal Loan: There are personal lines you can take to consolidate your loans as well. These are a good option, because they do not require a high interest rate to qualify. Just make sure you don’t end up with a high interest rate, and that you can make the payments before you get into the loan.
Cut Out Payments You Don’t Need:
Once you have organized all of your payments and consolidated what you could, the next step is to look through your budget carefully and cut out anything you don’t need. You don’t want to have random payments on your account that are not necessities. Cutting out payments that are not necessary can save you money that you can either put into savings or put towards paying down other bills.
Set Simple Goals For Yourself:
Set a saving goal for yourself each month and try to stay on budget so you can save, pay bills and still have money left over to live off of.
Cut down on shopping you don’t need to do. Many of us love retail therapy, but buying more stuff does not help stay clutter free and organized. Now that you have set a new budget, stick to your goals and stay organized and clutter free!