Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

4 Ways to Make Sure Your Bills Get Paid On Time

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You’re busy.  I get it.  I’m busy, too, and sometimes I forget to sit down and pay my bills in a timely manner.  However, I don’t want a ding to my credit score.  Because I’m so busy with my kids and their many activities, and L.I.F.E., I use several strategies to make sure my bills get paid on time.

Here are some of my favorite strategies:

Set e-mail reminders.

For each of my credit cards, I have set up e-mail reminders.  Depending on the company, I’m sent an e-mail reminder six to 10 days before my payment is due.  I can’t tell you how many times these e-mail reminders have meant the difference between a late and on-time payment.  Everyone should set e-mail reminders for their bills, in my opinion, especially if you have a very busy schedule.

Set up recurring payments to your credit card.

While I generally avoid setting up recurring payments to my checking account, I do advocate setting up recurring payments to credit cards.  Why?  If a charge is fraudulently applied to your credit card, the credit card company protects you.  If the same thing happens to your checking account, your entire account could be emptied, and then you would miss other payments to other creditors and have to pay for bounced checks.

In addition, if you have a credit card with a rewards program, you could gain rewards simply for paying your monthly bills that you used to pay via check and snail mail.  Those points can add up quickly when you’re paying your monthly recurring bills with credit cards.  Just make sure to pay off your credit card each month.

Set up a special account for automatic payments from your savings or checking.

If you still prefer to set up automatic payments to your bank account, I’d suggest setting up a separate account just for automatic payments.  Then, if there is an error on the vendor’s part, you don’t risk paying overdraft fees on your regular checking account.

I have one account that is devoted solely to automatic payments for my husband’s student loans and our life insurance (the only two payments I have set to auto pay from our bank account).  These are both fixed expenses, so at the beginning of every month, I just schedule a transfer to that account so the payments can be deducted.  Since I don’t use this account for any other purpose, there is no worry about not being able to make other payments or bouncing checks.

Keep all of your bills in one place.

If you’re still receiving bills in the mail rather than electronically, keep all of your bills in one place.  If you use snail mail, also keep stamps there.  Then, when you’re ready to sit down to pay your bills, you have everything you need right in one place.

What are your strategies to make sure your bills get paid on time?  What suggestions would you add to this list?

Simple Ways to Save Even When Money Is Tight

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For the 15 years my husband and I have been married, we’ve always shared just one car.  Actually, most of the time I’ve been the one with the car—first because I had to drive to work while he could easily take the train, and, once I became a stay-at-home mom, because I usually had the kids that I needed to transport while he could commute by public transportation.

While he’s been a good sport about this situation, the time has come to finally buy another car that he can use.

The problem?  We don’t want to take out a car loan because doing so would create a serious strain on our budget.  We want to pay cash instead.

But how do you save money for a car when you feel like there’s absolutely NO wiggle room in your budget?  Here are the strategies we’re using.

Save Cash Back from Credit Cards

Our credit card regularly gives us cash back.  For the first three months of 2016, we’ve earned just shy of $150 in cash back.  If we continue at this pace, we’ll have an extra $600 in cash back thanks to using, and paying off, our credit card each month for as many purchases as we can.

Save Whenever You Receive Discounts on Regular Expenses

This is my favorite way to save because there are so many opportunities to save this way!

For instance, at Christmas, we received a postcard from our car repair shop offering 10% off our next car repair.  I held onto that, and just last week we had a $284 car repair.  We saved $28 thanks to the postcard, and that money went right in our car fund.

We took a vacation recently and stopped by Denny’s on our last day when we had eaten up all the food we had brought with us in the cooler.  Our total was $39, but for some reason, the cashier decided to give us a $6 discount.  I put that money right in our car fund.

Our grocery store gives fuel rewards points for shopping.  For every $100 spent in groceries, you get 10 cents off your next gallon of gas.  If you buy a gift card, your reward points are for double that amount.  I send any of those savings to our car fund.  Just today I put 19 gallons in my tank, and I got 20 cents off per gallon.  I put that $3.80 into our car fund.

Save Change or a Specific Bill

I don’t use this strategy anymore because we typically use credit cards for our purchases, but when I was using cash a lot, I never spent the change and earmarked it all for a specific fund.  One time, I went several months saving all of the $5 bills I got and used them to pay down debt.

To be sure, none of these savings strategies is growing our car fund at an impressive rate.  However, we ARE saving something using ways we save in our everyday lives.  We’re consciously, physically setting aside our savings, which is a great way to save when your budget is tight and you feel like you have no wiggle room.

Do you save like this?  If so, what are your favorite strategies?

 

Innovis Health Stinks

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Unfortunately, I try to keep this blog safe for work; which means that I can’t use the words and terms that I would like to in reference to Innovis.  In short, Innovis Health is one of the worst medical facilities that I’ve ever had to deal with.  And that’s not an exaggeration.  Innovis Stinks.

And here’s why.  Actually, the laundry list of reasons is a bit too long for me to go into detail, but let me discuss the most recent issue that is prompting this post.

I owe them money.  All told, it’s around $1300 that I owe them.  Not a big deal, and manageable.  Unless your Innovis.  Beginning in November of last year, I’ve had a budgeted agreement with them to pay them $45 a month.  I set it up on my bill pay to make sure that I won’t miss a payment and all is well and good, right?  Wrong.

Today, I got a phone call from their business department (read bill department) requesting a call back.  I called back and got a rep.  What she explained to me is that the policy of Innovis is to get at least 10% of the outstanding bill as a payment.  Fine, I told her, but I can’t pay that.  We only have so much money in the month and $45 is what we can afford to send to them.  I was then informed that unless they get the 10%, there is no way for them to guarantee that my bill will not get reviewed for collections.  What?!?

In a nutshell, they would rather sell my account to a collection agency and get 50% (or whatever an agency pays for debt) of the money they are owed instead of carrying the bill and receive all of it $45 at a time?  What kind of hair brained idea is that?  By being a good consumer and paying my bill on time and consistently, they are going to irreparably damage my credit report?  Some reward for doing the right thing.

I have half a mind to ask them to send it to collections now so I can begin negotiations with the collection agency to reduce the bill.  Unfortunately, I don’t know if that would affect my families ability to receive medical care there.  Not a big deal for me, I switched to a different medical facility a while ago, but Innovis has the only Pediatrician in town.

Innovis is the worst health facility I’ve ever dealt with.

And thanks for reading my rant.  I know I feel better.