Organizing Recurring Bills

Do you have enough money coming in to cover your immediate bills? These include: food, shelter, basic clothing, transportation, and utilities? What about the rest of your bills? Credit cards, car payments, student loans, cash advances? Do you have extra money when you are finished paying all of these? Exactly how much extra money? Where will that money go in the short-term? Long-term? You should be able to answer every one of these questions with complete certainty. If you cannot, don't worry, Cole and I were in the same boat not long ago; we will show you how we changed our ways. If it can work for us, it can work for anyone!

As I have mentioned before, this is one of many posts that will be dedicated to the subject of budgeting. In the beginning, it will seem like a lot of work, but we promise that it will get much easier! We are going to break down this task into small, manageable steps throughout this series! Let's get started:

Today, we will focus on the recurring bills. Gather all of these, such as housing, utilities, insurance, any debt (credit cards, car payments, ect), entertainment (Netflix, Hulu, ect), really anything that you have to pay monthly or semi-monthly. Write (or type) all of these down on ONE sheet of paper along with the amount, and the date on which they need to be paid. Be as fancy/creative, or as basic as you want. The whole point of this is that you want all of your bills to be in one place, no scattered throughout a filing cabinet, or worse, throughout the whole house. I must add, not to be morbid, but if you have a spouse, partner, family member, ect. that would need to have access to this information if something were to keep you from paying these, make sure they are aware of where this list can be found.

Now you can see who you need to pay, how much you need to pay them, and when the payments are due. Look at you! This is the first step to budgeting. This amount of money needs to be set aside each month to ensure that all of your bills get paid!

If you do not have the amount coming in, don't panic just yet. You have been making it somehow, so continue forward for now, and we will offer more suggestions as we continue. The most important things to make sure you have money for are the basics: food, shelter, basic clothing, basic transportation, and utilities. We will have an entire post dedicated for food budgeting coming up, so stay-tuned for that one, it will be awesome!

That is your budgeting homework for the night, so snap to it and we will have more for you tomorrow!

Enjoy your day,

M & Cole

If you are having immediate problems with money, send us an email at m.myselfinc@yahoo.com, and we will answer any and all question that we can, and if we are unable to answer your questions we will most certainly point you in the direction of someone who can! All emails are completely confidential.

Special thanks to...
Clutter Coach
Stuff About Money

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