Staying on Top of Your Bills

Keeping on top of your bills is achievable. Anyone can survive comfortably in these financial times if they are willing to work and have a bit of self-discipline. The safest bet is having many small jobs so that if you lose one you have your other jobs to keep you going. Of course, that is not viable for everyone.

Next you need to work out exactly how much your bills are costing you each week. To work this out, all you do is get a bill, let's say the electricity bill. First you need to work out how much your average electricity bill is. To do this, you get the last four electricity bills, add up all four totals and then divide it by four. For example, say the last four bills were $346.98, $318.67, $296.36 and $453.79. Now add these together, $1,415.80 and divide it by four. The answer, $353.95, which is the average amount of your last four bills, Now, if the bill was quarterly (every three months), you then need to divide that by 12 (12 weeks in three months), which is $29.49. So that is approximately how much your electricity is costing you per week. So for that bill you need to put away $30 per week. You do this to all your bills, working out how much each bill is costing you per week.

Once this has been done you need to work out what you want to do next. You can make an envelope for each bill, writing on it which bill it is and how much you need to put in it each week. This method only works if you don't have a lot of bills, as the amount of money can become too much to safely keep lying around the house. For example, if you own multiple cars, motorbikes, boats and/or properties, this is probably not the right way to go about it.

If the envelope method is not right for you than what you need to do is add up how much your weekly bills come to. To do this you just add together all the weekly totals that you have just worked out and that amount should be deposited into a bank account every week without fail, before you take money out for anything else, as it is not your money to spend, that is the bill money. This account should be only for the bill money so that you are never tempted to withdraw it for something other than bills. Then, when you get a bill, you pay it out of that account. This way you always have money for any bill that comes in.

And what if your weekly bills come to more than you earn in a week? You take on another job. There are many small jobs that you can do to earn extra cash, especially cleaning jobs, or eBaying stuff you pick up at garage sales, markets, op shops, etc.

And if you can't do extra jobs, then you need to do things to make your bills smaller as you are living beyond your means.

This may sound very simplistic but it really works.

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