Managing your bills is not always easy – especially if you have old bills to pay off that have high interest rates. For these bills, it can even be hard to get past the minimum monthly payment. So the bills get stretched out over months and years without ever getting paid off. It can be even worse if it’s expensive credit card debt and you are still using that credit card account for new purchases. You can find yourself on a never ending roller coaster of increasing debt with no way out. There are ways you can manage your bills better so that you are able to get them down to zero. Here are 5 tips to do that:
1) As in most budgets, to manage your bills you need to make a list of all of them. Sometimes just in the act of making the list you realize how many bills you have and you will reduce your spending. But to manage them, you need to understand how many bills you have, how much you owe on each one of them and when each one is due. So in your list, include the date due for each bill and the minimum payment due each month.
2) Organize your bills by dates due. The last thing you want is to pay your bills a day or two late and then get slapped with penalties. Set up a calendar system where you can clearly see when bills are due and plan to pay them ahead of time. If you pay your bills online, you can easily set this up ahead of time so the payments will be deducted on the correct date.
3) Never pay only the minimum on old bills. Always add some amount to the minimum so you will be moving in a positive direction on those bills. Otherwise, you can get dragged down for months or even years without ever making any positive progress on your bills.
4) If you find that you do not have money to pay all of the old bills, or if the interest rates that credit card companies are charging you are too high, you can apply for a car title loan. Car title loans use your car as security for bad credit loans of up to $20,000. The amount you can get depends on the type and model of car that you own. Auto title loans are reduced interest, so you can use that money to pay off high interest debt. In this way, you can save a lot of money in interest fees and late penalties. The process is easy and fast with the emergency cash being ready in one hour.
5) On your list of expenses, jot down how much you can pay on each bill every month. This will help your organize your monthly income and expenses and you will be able to see ahead of time when one of your old bills will finally be paid off.