So, in addition to my organizational tips that work for me that I plan to share each week, I must say that I am really happy that tonight I completed the following:
(1) I better organized my fabric and craft materials (more on that next week),
2) I transferred current phone numbers and family birthdays from my old pocket calendar to my new one, and
(3) I made up my new bill-paying cheat sheet for the coming year.
Like many people, I keep my bills that come in the mail in a bill box. I used to review and sort them in the general order in which they get paid once a week when Buck and I had paychecks coming in that often. Now we get money three times a month, so that is how often I review bills to be paid.
However, now some bills come online and several are on auto-payment. To help me keep track of what bills must be paid when, and what bills I did remember to pay, I devised a bill-paying record, aka cheat sheet.
What works for me is to, on a 4" x 6" index card, list the bills in the approximate order in which they must be paid each month and to draw columns for tracking. In addition to 12 columns for the months that I check off once I actually pay the bill, I have columns for payee name, usernames and passwords. Another narrow column is for notes, such as if a bill is always due on a certain date of the month, or if it is an auto-pay bill.
Yes, yes, I know that as a U.S. Postal Service retiree I should support my former employer by paying all my bills by mail. But, reality is, I was paid bi-weekly back then, and my money never was in my bank on the same date each month. Some months, getting the money in the bank and the bills in the mail in time was iffy. I did not dare send a bill too many days before my money was deposited in case the payment check hit the bank before the deposit.
I do not think the problem of not knowing for sure how many days it took for a bill to be delivered and deposited was because of the Postal Service as much as it was due to the mail rooms of the companies receiving my payments. For years I mailed in my house payment. Each time I sent it in early with several days to spare, the check would hit my bank three days after I mailed it. However, if I mailed it three days before the grace period deadline date, the check would hit my bank in four days. The payment was late by one day and I ended up with a late fee. That only had to happen twice, and I found another way to make that payment. Online bill payments began for me.
Checks, envelopes and stamps cost money. I am paying for my internet service whether or not I pay my bills online.
With the coming of more of my bills being paid online came the cheat sheet. Not only did I need a way to keep track of what bills I had to pay when, I needed something to keep track of my usernames and passwords. Different companies had different criteria. One size username and password did not work for every company.
I have a few usernames and three main passwords I use a lot (plus a few minor ones). I have a good memory, but not good enough to remember which username and password goes with each and every account I have. Thus, the cheat sheet.
I am smart enough that I do not have this information completely written out so that if someone gets their hands on my cheat sheet they can get into all my accounts and mess with them. I have my own little codes. I record 2-3 characters from the username or password and use dashes to fill in for the rest. For example, if one of my passwords was 7peanuts (which none of them are), I would write 7p-----s. Works pretty well. Not even Buck can figure out what my usernames and passwords are. (He has trouble with his own.)
Speaking of that, I went out of town last year for a week to a place where I could not get online to pay two bills. I asked Buck to handle it for me. He agreed, as long as I wrote out in full detail how to do it. I filled pages with instructions for the procedure that I knew how to do using only the information on one third of a line of a 4" x 6" card. When I arrived home, he told me that, just in case something ever happens to me, I needed to write out IN FULL all my usernames and passwords for each account and keep them in a safe place. He does not want to try to figure them out using my cheat sheet.
Why do I use a 4" x 6" index card instead of something like a large sheet of brightly colored paper? Because this card folded in half, along with my visiting teaching list, important business/doctor appointment cards, a small note pad, a full page of contacts information (folded in half, then tri-folded), extra stamps, an L.D.S. pass-along card, a few grandkid pictures, an emory board, a band-aid, toothpicks, a couple of paperclips, miscellaneous receipts and coupons and a pad or two of post-it notes for my shopping list or to-do tasks, I keep with my pocket-size by-the-month calendar.
That is another organizing tip that I learned from experience works for me.
I know there is a big industry for those big multi-ring planner books--some with leather covers, some zippered, some binder-size, some with purse compartments or cell phone/PDA pockets attached. When I started working as a union steward about 12 years ago, I invested in at least four of them over as many years. A couple of mine had the attached purse compartments which helped me some since keeping track of a purse, a zippered day planner book and a briefcase was awkward.
I loved the dividers, the plastic pouches, the business card holders, ruler and the calculator--all those fun toys. I hated the weight and the juggling everything I had to carry.
Another steward gave me some of the best advice I have received for calendar options. She said that she could not carry a heavy planner in her purse because the weight hurt her neck (I could relate). She said she used the pocket-size date book available from the union for stewards and officers. Each double page showed a monthly calendar. In the squares for each day she recorded her appointments and tracked her mileage. She said she just wrote small. She decided that once the little one inch+ square was full, she had enough to do that day.
I tried that, and found it was quick, easy and effective for me. I use a fine-tip pen and write small. Surprisingly to me, at my busiest, I was able to fit four to five appointments with miles in each daily square.
Weekly planners never worked for me because I hate flipping a bunch of pages to try to find out what I already have scheduled, and what is available. I even tried a PDA, and may even try a one again sometime now they have the touch-screens. But, once again, I did not like flipping from screen to screen to get the whole calendar picture. (Not only that, I was too slow with a stylus.) I need to see at least one full month at a time to have a feel for what I am doing each day or each week. I love my computer and other tech-toys, but the low-tech paper calendar is still on the top of my list of favorites.
What I quickly added to my little calendars as I received them each year from the union were paper pockets on the insides of each cover. I made them out of small letter envelopes sealed, cut in half and reinforced with tons of tape. I left as much paper uncoated as I could and recorded all kinds of entry codes, phone numbers and key information on those pockets. Each year I transferred the information I still needed from the old calendar to the new one, omitting the obsolete.
Now, about 10 years later, I am no longer a union steward representing hundreds of carriers and I am retired. But, I still use a pocket-size paper monthly calendar. I buy one with a plastic cover so that I still have my little pockets. About four years ago I found one inserted in a vinyl cover with extra fabric pockets and a pen-holder, so I buy my replacements to fit that. I love it. I will be sad when it wears out. My calendar with pockets is my paper brain and emergency kit. I use it to keep a lot of my important information--including my bill-paying cheat sheet--compactly in one place.
No comments:
Post a Comment