Day-to-day activities

Bills

It could take a year or more before you have all of your bills entered into your budget space. Infrequent payments such as magazine subscriptions can be difficult to identify until you receive another annual invoice. Once you have most of your bills entered, the major activity will be to adjust the next payment amount for bills with varying monthly payments such as utilities, telephone companies, and lawn care.

Playing "What If?" with your bills could happen when, for example:

• you are contemplating taking on a new loan,
• you want to accelerate paying off debt, or
• you want to see how your net cash flow will be affected by stopping or adding certain bills.

You will pay bills twice each month on the spreadsheet column dates. How long it will take for you to pay bills depends on the payment methods you use. The more automatic your payments, the less time you will spend paying bills.

Continue with "Credit cards"