Remember to Pay Your Bills

“A man who pays his bills on time is soon forgotten”
- Oscar Wilde

My wife handles the billing paying and she uses google calendar to send her reminders when bills are due. She's also saving event and meetings on the calendar so that year-end we can add up mileage driven for volunteer organizations and deduct it on our taxes.

A similar plan for bill reminders can be found on Consumerist.com.

1. For each bill, I set up a new task named after the bill in question and the day of the month it's generally due (for example, my AT&T bill is usually due on the 5th of every month, though occasionally it'll be on the 8th).


2. I set it up to repeat monthly.

3. If it's a bill that has a fixed monthly minimum payment (student loans, car payments, etc.) I add that information in a note, along with the URL to log into the site if online billing is available.

4. Set as priority level 2. I use priority solely so that when I look at my list of tasks in Gmail (using the Firefox extension), which is where I see them most often, I can immediately tell what bills, if any, are due soon. I use priority level 2 because I like the color, but any other level would work just as well for this purpose.

5. Tag as "bill." I saved a search for "tag:bill" so that they're all grouped together.

Bottom Line

Let technology work for you. Set up reminders for important things you must not forget. I have entered the special dates for friends and relatives on Hallmark.com. It will email me reminders in advance so I don't miss a birthday or anniversary.