How Do You Pay Your Bills?

I pay all of mine by Bpay, on payday. I don’t have that many recurring bills:

• Electricity
• Home Phone
• Car Insurance
• Contents Insurance
• Heath Insurance

The Electricity and Home Phone are actually quarterly bills, but I divided the last bill by the number of pay periods before the next one and pay that amount each month. Then once the bill comes I just pay any extra that might be due before the due date and it’s all good.

The insurance bills are the same amount each month, and my car/contents don’t cost any extra to pay by the month which is handy.

The annual bills sneak up though, like my NRMA coverage which I've just paid. So I've now divided that by 12 and will pay that much each month into my new ‘bills’ account (renamed my ‘future car’ account for now) so I’ll be covered for next year.

I also need to work out my registration, green and pink slip amounts too so I can start putting money aside for them as they’ll come up again in May. I’ll obviously need to divide those by the remaining months between now and then so it doesn't hurt too much at the time!

I don’t know why, but I’m fascinated by how people manage their bills. There have been some great posts out there lately that I really enjoyed:

• JD at Get Rich Slowly has two posts outlining why you should or shouldn't prepay your bills.
• TV Girl and Money covers making all your bills ‘monthly’ regardless of how often they actually fall. It’s a great post about creating a budget all round really.
• Paid Twice had a nice surprise recently when she opened a bill and found (after the initial shock wore off) that the amount was a credit, not owing. Wouldn't that be nice?

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