Week 38 of the Weekly Organization Challenge

This is week 38 of The Good Wife's Weekly Organization Challenge! This week focused on bill paying.

There are two main ways to set up bill paying - the old fashioned way with stone tablets paper checks and using the internet that Al Gore invented. There are pros and cons to both.

Online
Pros - faster, usually, since accounts can be credited the same day, especially if using the account website (Capital One, for example) versus your bank's online bill pay option
Cons - for us poors, you might need a day or two to make sure you have enough cash in your account to cover the bills
Pro - some banks, like my awesome one, offer rewards for using the online bill pay
Con - it is easy to forget when a bill is due and/or record the transaction in your register

Paper checks
Pro - a paper trail is created should you ever need to verify a payment or fight an unfair charge
Con - you have to make sure you always have checks on hand and stamps
Pro - some accounts, like medical bills, still usually only accept paper checks
Con - some poor account representative will have to try and decipher your serial killer handwriting

I do about 90% of bill paying online. I have alerts set up on my computer and smartphone to remind me to pay bills on time. I also have my bill checklist to help remember as well as a daily planner. My bank offers a mobile banking app, so I can pay bills anywhere, anytime. And I get those rewards I mentioned above. All and all, it's pretty sweet.

For the other 10% of bills, ones that need actual checks in the mail, I like to sit down once a week, usually on Thursday since that's shitty TV night, and write all the checks and enter the transactions into the register. Then I stamp them bitches and put them in the outgoing mail slot for a trip to the mailbox on Friday morning.

Organize along with me in The Good Wife's Weekly Organization Challenges