The Pinterest Diaries: Bills, Bills, Bills

Having a baby is expensive.  Therefore, over the past few months, I've had bill after bill come in.  Since we are planning on paying them off with our tax return, I open them, look them over, and then just toss them in a pile on my nightstand. 

Now a little insight into Jamie:  I'm the kind of person who lets clutter pile up for, at most, a week, then it's like I'm possessed and I have to do everything in my power to get the clutter put away and organized.  I would pick up the pile of bills, organize them in some way, then get distracted and just put them back on my nightstand.  Since more bills were coming in, I'd have to reorganize them everytime I went through them.  Finally, I said enough is enough, and found a pin on Pinterest for organizing bills.  Here is my inspiration:

Budget Binder

This is what I started with:

(see?  crazy amount of bills)

I organized them by place, then date, then stapled all the duplicates together (you will find that I have major OCD issues).  I had gone to my favorite place, Target, earlier in the week and purchased the following:

• sticky labels - I got these instead of page dividers because then I could move them easily instead of having to make new labels every single time I got a new bill
• stapler
• a cute binder

We already had the sharpie, as I'm sure everyone does.

I then put the bill piles into alphabetical order (again, OCD), wrote up all the labels using the sharpie, and placed them in a binder.  I also made a separate section for 'Paid' bills. 

Whenever I pay a bill, I write directly on it when I paid it, how I paid it (debit, check, etc.), the communication I used to pay it (over the phone, online, mail, etc), and the confirmation number, if they give me one. 

**ADVICE:  I recommend you ALWAYS do this and ALWAYS demand a confirmation number.  There have been too many times that a bill collector has called me saying that I haven't paid a bill and I've had to give them this information because they're system made a mistake.**

I plan on keeping the paid bills for two years, because I know the second I throw them away, I'm going to need them for something.  (That's the hoarder in me coming out.)

This is the end product:

You can purchase printable labels if you want the writing to be prettier, but I just wrote them out.  I find that the printable labels are a pain in the neck.  Also, I don't have a printer.

This project was relatively easy.  I just had to get motivated enough to sit down and do it.  And also prepare myself to face how much money we're going to have to spend in the next couple weeks.  Blech.