bills and the paper stubs....

[Csara]

A few years ago, DH and I read this book called Smart Couples Finish Rich (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=weddingtalker-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2F 0767904842%2Fqid%3D1137726030%2Fsr%3D8-1%2Fref%3Dpd_bbs_1%3Fn%3D507846%26s%3Dbooks%26v%3D glance). They gave us the tip to organize our filing cabinet with folders for every bill and to save all the stubs. Well fast forward a few years to present and our filing cabinet is overflowed and hardly closes anymore, I have a gigantic basket in the kitchen full of paperwork and piles in our home office of paperwork that needs to be "filed". What a joke! Even for the electronic automatic payments we have, I still get a stub. What is the point of saving the entire 3 page explaination of my electric bill if it is online? NADA! So, now I have the lovely project of shredding literally hundreds of useless papers. I've realized it is completely unnecessary and a huge waste of space for me to save all of these stubs. After I pay a bill, I am going to throw away the stub and if it is deductible come tax time, I will immediately enter it into an excel spreadsheet.

So, how about you guys? What do you do with bills? Do you pay them right away or wait until you have all of them and do it in one day? Are most of your bills paid electronically? Do you save the stubs?

[Deana]

I used to save all the stubs, but started throwing away the stubs from utilities, cell/home phone, satalite and a couple others. i keep, for one year, stubs for the mortgage, credit cards, life insurance and dh's student loan. We also just started a flexible spending acct w/dh's work, so I have to find a place to keep all those receipts.
Our filing cab is way overstuffed, and I need to start shredding!!! I recently started creating a file for any pile in the kitchen that seemed to grow. I hate piles in the kitchen!!!

I sit down 2-3 times a week to balance our books (we use MS Money) and to pay/organize bills. I use my debt card for almost everything, so I often check our acct online to see what I need to enter into MS money. I handle all the bills, while dh handles all of the investments. Works really well for us.

[Csara]

I handle all the bills, while dh handles all of the investments. Works really well for us.That is the way we work it too, but lately it has gotten pretty overwhelming for me. I think it would be really helpful to use a program like MS money. Has it made things much easier for you?

[MissRyry]

I, like Deana, keep stubs for one year -- then trash. In this day and age though, records are really easy to obtain over the internet if you would ever need them.

>'.'<

[honeybunny]

I keep my utility stubs for one year in case we ever sell the house. I know that when I was looking for a house (we bought pre-owned), it was nice when people could show us what their utility bills were like. I usually pay bills as they come in although I love paperwork, bill paying, and finances (sick, aren't I?) so it doesn't bother me to pay bills that often. Plus the utility companies don't seem to give you much lead time on when you get the bill and when it's due.

I think I tend to keep more paperwork than is necessary. I totally agree that if you can access recent statements online, then you don't really need to keep them (although I do for at least a year and don't really know why). The things that I access most often from the filing cabinet are medical paperwork, receipts, flex spending stuff & other benefits paperwork, warranty & use/care instructions, and insurance stuff. Most of the bills get filed and never accessed again. And most information that I need can be accessed through the web now.

[Deana]

Honey, good point about the utility bills and selling our home - I hadn't thought of that.

C, I LOVE ms money. It has made doing our finances SO much easier. The only thing that I don't use is the automatic download (from our bank into ms money). It doesn't reconcile everything pefectly. So i just print our bank statement every few days and reconcile it myself. It has a lot of nice reporting features, and has made doing our taxes easier too (if you catagorize everything as you enter).

I also have a spreadsheet with all of our recurring bills and their due dates. Then a column for when I sent the payment, just so I am certain everything gets paid on time.

[Margarita]

I save everything for 3 years because we need to keep any business receipts and bill stubs for that long. It was too complicated to deal with keeping some and trashing others. Only the current year is in our file cabinet, with the others in big envelopes in our storage room. At the end of every year, I clean out the file cabinet and take the oldest year to the shredder (my parents' office). It works really well because I sometimes need to access receipts/bills from earlier in the year, and they're easy to get to.

I am finally starting to get my bill paying on a twice-a-month schedule. We just switched banks to one that has online bill pay free for 10 checks a month. That's about as many regular bills as I have, so it's perfect.

I use the same software my parents do for my books, so come tax time, I just have to print my reports and give them all of our W-2s and 1099s. That's really nice.

Oh, and I do ALL of the financial stuff. We don't do a whole lot with investments ourselves. We have a guy who handles that. B would go nuts if he had to do our budget or pay bills. LOL

[iamhope]

We use to save all the stubs too. But just this year we say enough. It was useless to save some of them. The light, water, phones, satalite we pay and kept stub for 1 month just till we get the next bill in to make sure it was paid and then we throw it away.
We both get paid every 2 weeks so that is when a bill gets paid , when we do. That's the life of living paycheck to paycheck. Most of my bills are paid online. Just water and any hospital bills have to be mailed in.