Tag Archives: paying bills

Managing Money

A Way To Pay Your Bills On Time

Here at T L Wall Accounting, one of the things we talk about helping people with is paying their bills. A part of that is helping people budget their money, personally and professionally. Another part, which we don’t talk about all that often, is setting up processes to pay your bills.

Did you know that you can set up every single monthly bill you owe to be paid automatically through your bank? It’s not only a way to make sure your bills get paid each month, but it puts you in better control of your money than allowing a third party to take money directly out of your account. That might not be an option when it comes to things like life insurance, but in general everything else can be set up that way.

Depending on the bank, it can be a pretty easy process, although in many cases people feel more comfortable having someone else help with it. As long as who you have to pay has an account number it can be done. Many people pay their mortgages this way, along with things such as utility bills, car insurance, cable… everything.

Once it’s set up, you can always go online and change the amounts at any time, since it’s accessed the same way you access your bank account. For instance, say you and your spouse or partner make payments on something and one of you pays more than normal at some point. If you have the ability to skip a payment or make a reduced payment for one month, you can adjust it easily. Also, suppose that you’ve gone over your data usage on your smartphone and they’ve imposed a penalty, then you could go in and adjust the payment to make it higher.

Your payment will go out on whatever date you tell it to. It might take up to 3 days before it registers as a payment for some vendors, but for most they’ll see it in a day, even if it takes a few days to clear. No mess, no fuss, and no more late payments.

If this is something you’d like to do and you’d like some help with it, feel free to ask us to help you.

Managing Money

Work Towards Now, Plan For The Future

A couple of years ago we posted an article here titled Setting Financial Goals. The, at the end of 2014, we posted another article asking people if they were going to set financial goals for the new year.

Riches
Creative Commons License Sheila Sund via Compfight

Like almost everyone else, we like to stress the reality of knowing how much money you’re making, being able to pay your bills, putting money away for a rainy day and still being able to have a fun life. Yet, we’re not sure that there’s enough emphasis put on the “now”, the more immediate needs of life.

Talking about the ability to pay one’s bills is pretty immediate, but maybe not immediate enough. For most bills, you’ll get them and have at least 21 days before there’s an expectation of payment. If you don’t have enough money and you know the bill is coming, that’s an extreme amount of pressure to deal with. If it’s multiple bills… way more pressure.

An article we wrote 3 years ago talked about whether it was better to pay off bills or save for retirement. Our conclusion was that paying off bills with higher interest rates is the wisest move, which is something one has to address while still working, because carrying debt into retirement will drain your limited income faster. Thus, you should be working towards a “now” mindset instead of thinking only of long term goals.

There was also an article on another blog on financial issues that gave a plan where, if you started young enough, you could have significant savings when you retire by learning how to put money away monthly, increasing it by $10 every year from age 20 to 40, then continuing that same investment amount for the final 25 years.

It’s a good plan but it still means that one has to think more of “now” than later. As a general question, how many of you are ready to start investing $100 a month into a long term savings plan and still pay all your bills and have a regular life? Actually, hopefully most of you do, but it’s something you might not think you’re ready for, which means a mindset change is needed into understanding the “now”.

What if you really don’t have that $100? Scary to think about isn’t it? This is why we talked about finding ways to increase income a couple of years ago, as well as talk about budgeting all the time. It’s also why we often mention working with an accountant if you need help in figuring things out; it never hurts to work with professionals on your financial goals.

Working towards “now” involves these things:

* having a significant enough income now
* paying down your most significant debt now
* budgeting what you have now
* being comfortable now

Think about it, and if you have anything more to add, let us know.
 

Managing Money

Should You Do Debt Consolidation?

Almost everyone at one time in their lives found themselves having trouble paying all the bills. Even if it wasn’t true, because you hadn’t verified your income versus how much you owed, you probably had some discomfort when it came to a question of whether or not you were managing your money properly.

If you ever find yourself in trouble, you have a few options.

3D Shackled Debt
Creative Commons License
Chris Potter via Compfight

One is to ignore it and wait for the phone calls to start coming in; we wouldn’t recommend that.

Another is to borrow money from friends and family. This might be a solution but, unless you don’t have to worry about paying them back, it can end up in family strife and probably isn’t a great option.

The best option is to look at some kind of debt consolidation program or process to help get out of debt, or at least to get some control of your finances so you at least know what’s going on.

We’ve talked in the past about things one should do when you’re having problems with bills, and those are great first steps. Being proactive is always a better option than sitting around feeling nervous and scared and waiting for things to happen.

One thing you can think about doing is, if most of your debt is in credit cards, moving balances to the cards with the lowest interest rate. While this doesn’t quite eliminate debt, it will give you fewer payments, lower total payments overall for a while, and if you can make larger payments you will reduce your debt faster.

The problems here are twofold. One, you might already be close to being overextended, thus this isn’t a viable option. Two, you have to be disciplined enough not to use the cards you clear, which might mean you’d have to do something as drastic as cutting some cards up to stop yourself. You have to do a major self evaluation here; if a lack of discipline is that put you in trouble to begin with don’t even think about this as an option.

Another thing you can do is some credit counseling. You can go to someone like an accountant, who can help you get a handle on your bills and even pay them for you, or set you up to pay things down while putting you on an allowance. Or you can look for free services like Consumer Credit Counseling, who will help negotiate payment terms with your creditors with the caveat that your accounts are closed at the same time. And no, you don’t get to keep a card in reserve, although you can always use your debit card.

A final thing to think about, if you own a home, is a debt consolidation loan via the bank where your mortgage is. This might be harder to do if you have high balances on all of your cards because the bank might not see you as a great credit risk, but if they do extend you credit it’ll end up becoming a part of your monthly mortgage payment, which will be less than what you pay now for your mortgage and bills, and the interest rate will probably be lower also.

The best option overall is to address any potential issues early so you don’t have to consider doing any of these things. Help is always available; you just have to ask for it.
 

Budgeting

5 Things To Do When You’re Going To Have Problems Paying Your Bills

Everyone has a period where there’s a problem concerning paying bills. It could be for many different reasons but no matter what the reason is, the pressure feels great. A reality most people don’t know is that you always feel worse when you don’t know what to do than once you figure out and start to address the issues. Here are 5 things you need to do along the way towards getting back your peace of mind.

1. Figure out if you’re really in financial distress or not. This involves a word some people think is ugly, budgeting and yet it’s a necessary thing and truthfully not as evil as some people think it is. Trust me, it’s comforting knowing that you have a lot more money than you thought you did if you do it right, and sometimes even if you don’t have as much as you hoped, you find that you have enough to pay everything if you just spend smarter.

2. If you’re close to being in trouble the first thing to do is figure out what you’re allowed to be a little bit behind on. Try to never fall behind on credit card payments because they’ll jack up your interest rate and that adds to your outstanding debt greatly. Services like phone, cable, even your power will often allow you to miss the date of payment and tack on maybe a $15 late fee, and some don’t tack on anything. This is a short term solution if you know you can catch up.

3. You just might have to get rid of some things or reduce other things. Sorry, but comfort just might have to take a minor hit along the way. If you have to turn off or reduce cable for awhile it’s something to think about. Do you really need that big package on your smartphone or regular phone or can you drop something for a short period of time?

4. Pick up the phone and call. Hiding won’t make things go away, but picking up the phone and making a call can help greatly. If you have a car payment sometimes you’ll find out that they give you so many “grace” payments during the course of your loan, which means you’ll get to skip a payment or make a very much reduced payment. Sometimes your credit cards companies will give you a reduced payment rate for a few months as long as you agree not to use the card at all and won’t jack up your interest rate. Many companies in today’s world will accept a one-time smaller payment if you tell them what your situation is. Almost everyone will work with you, but you’ll never know if you don’t try.

5. Don’t panic; get help if you need it. Why are accountants around? Why is there an organization called Consumer Credit Counseling? Why are there other people who can help you with budgeting and planning? Because many people need help with their finances and it doesn’t always get to the point of having to declare bankruptcy. Get help if you need it; if you don’t, then do what you need to do to get out of trouble and regain your peace of mind.
 

Budgeting

The Basics Of Budgeting

Whether you’re in business or you’re worried about your home finances, budgeting can help bring peace of mind to you and help you know where your money is going. It gives you the opportunity to pay bills, save money, and even figure out if you need more money or to control expenses so you can sustain yourself.

budgeting cake

Budgeting sounds really hard and boring to most people, which is probably why they don’t do it. If you have a lot of debt you probably don’t want to know about it, but you can’t address your issues without knowledge; that goes for everything in life. Budgeting isn’t hard, although there are aspects of it that can be complicated. We’re going to give you the easiest way to go about it, which is a great start.
Continue reading The Basics Of Budgeting →