When I am comfortable with money I pay my bills immediately, but as if it's a cycle from times to times I'm really short on my money and I wait until the very last possible day to pay simply because I don't have money to pay until I receive. How do you pay your bills, you need to wait until pay day too?
I've been late many times with paying my bills. Sometimes because I didn't have enough money, at other times I totally forgot. I have become somewhat relaxed about paying bills. From time to time I get friendly letters to remind me, and that's ok. Once in a while there was a threat, but even then I still had a couple of weeks to pay up. I don't want to stress too much about bills. I make sure that I can cover them as much as possible in the appointed time frame by continuously putting small amounts of cash into my piggy bank especially dedicated to bills.
I have had to wait for the last minute on more than one occasion in the past. For the past few months, I've been pretty good about being able to pay on time and in advance, though, so I'm happy with that. I still don't have a savings built up, but at least I don't feel like I'm living so close on the edge any more.
In most cases the bills are to be paid on certain deadline so fortunately by the time the deadline is over I would have been paid from my work. It is good that some companies can understand it is always not possible to have the money when they need. So they understand that sometimes a person can also not have the money in time but there are those that do not care and will simply terminate their services if you fail to pay on time.
For me it's cyclical, I am again on that part of the cycle that on top of my table are some bills waiting to pay day to be liquidated. There's not much I can do really, I cut on some expenses, but my income is coming down to so it's a shameful situation we are living, I'm earning less than I did 6 years ago and I'm at the same job...
I wait to pay either when money comes in from my paycheck, which is divided by two and paid twice a month, or I'll put the bill on my credit card to pay for everything at once when I pay that bill. That way I have more control of when I need to pay and as everything it in only one bill it's easier to see how much I can spend and how much I'll need to save up.
No. i do not wait until the last day to pay my bills. I do not wait until the last minute to pay my bills because of the late fees. Some companies charge you a ridiculous late fee if you are late. that is only going to create more debt foe me. So i try to pay my bills on time. Of course sometimes i have no choice, but to wait. However, I hate it when that happens.
Are you serious Eagle910? I've never heard of those late fees, in fact, I've paid some bills after the deadline and I had no penalty. If there were those fees I'd have an extra care of course, not only I have to pay the bill but late fees as well, no way!
Uh oh, that's not good. It might be time for you to consider changing jobs.... Even if you really like that one, your pay should be INCREASING with them over time, just by default of inflation, and you should eventually be getting raises, too. Six years is a long time to be at the same job and not get an increase in pay.
No no, I'm in Portugal you know, and if your are not aware of our situation I tell you that everyone is earning less and less and that the real crisis is from those almost 20% unemployed that can't get a job. So I can't really complain, I am better than most.
Oh my! That's still really sucky. I'm glad that you're better off than other people in your same area, but that still has to be really hard.
That's true, courtesy of bad management for many years and from worldwide corruption, the populations always pay the price, not the big ones. Well, at least I am getting some great tips here on how to manage my money better!
I used to pay all my bills through my bank's automatic bill pay, which was nice because if they couldn't transfer the funds electronically they would just mail a check to them at no extra cost. So not only was this convenient, but it saved me on having to buy stamps. The main caveat was that you had to make sure you set your payment date to be no less than a week before the bill was due, to allow for several days for the payment to make it to it's destination. This worked out really well for a number of reasons, not only did it consolidate all my bill paying into one spot, but it forced me to have a week "buffer" in case something went wrong. If something went wrong with my checking account and the bill pay didn't go through, I at least had a few days to get the payment over to my creditors by some other means, such as mailing it to them myself, or calling them up and scheduling a payment directly with them by giving them my checking account number over the phone. You always should pay your bills no later than a few days before they are due. You never know when something is going to go wrong in the process, which can set off a chain reaction of events which is nobody else's fault but your own. For example, if you go go buy something at a store and they accidentally way over charge you, depleting your whole account balance, it will cause all of your other bill payments to get declined - whereas if you would have paid them all a few days in advance of their due date, you would have had some time to straighten everything else out before the payments bounced.
I tend to pay my bills in clusters. I have a few due around the same time of the month so I log into my bank and pay all of them at the same time. Unfortunately the odd bill is due when the others are not and I have to pay a couple of times during the month. For me it is an issue of managing my time more than the extra day or two of interest that I might earn by waiting until the last minute. If a bill can not be paid online, I usually send it early as I like to give the snail mail enough time to get the payment there.
Today was payday (uhuuu) and I paid a couple of bills I needed to pile up from last month, so my income has already a good cut. No problem, just managed another month lol, so trying to spend even less this month to see if I get to the end of it more comfortable.
I don't like late payments, so I do not delay on my bills. My strategy here is that I save money for the sole purpose of the billing, since my bills come once a month, I tend to divide my money equally to my bills, stash them and when the time comes just send it to them pronto. That way you won't be behind your bills, saves you the headaches and stress.
That's great death, but unfortunately for me the last few months I am spending more than what I earn, so I am leaving bills until I receive. I know I need to balance my money, but at the same time I keep getting unexpected expenses and that's really hard to manage.
If I had bills to pay, then I'd settle them the soonest time possible, because you will eventually pay them anyway, so there is no gain when you delay paying them. The only time that a bill does not get paid immediately is if the money is not enough at the moment. That's how it is in our household.
Got to love that, if I had to pay bills, I have to envy you now. That is exactly what I do when I have money, I pay them as soon as I get them because I hate having debts, but when I don't have money on the bank account I need to prioritize, meaning, food comes first and than the rest...
My due dates of my bills are spread out so I tend to have one bill due every week. Obviously the first week is my biggest one, rent and I always pay that in advance. The rest I go back and forth on, sometimes if I am in a super organizing mood in the beginning of the month I will set up automatic withdrawals for all of my bills, generally I don't think like this and end up paying the bills a few days in advance. I figure as long as I'm not late it's no big deal. I want to start paying all of my bills at the beginning of the month so I can then just forget about them.
