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The Almighty Buck

Best Ways to Organize Bills? 112

Posted by Cliff from the indexing-and-sorting dept.
scorp1us asks: "Every year on the 1st of January, I start a new set of folders for storing my bills. Generally, I keep everything divided up by account. But this seems to take too long. I wait 3-6 months and get a big pile nad have to go about sorting it. I have been considering a per-month scheme - all bills go to one folder, each month. With all the CS people out there studying sorting algorithms, has anyone found a better approach?"
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Best Ways to Organize Bills? More

Best Ways to Organize Bills?

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  • Basic life management skills... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29, 2003 @02:25PM (#7828938)
    ...are not news for nerds, no matter what "algorithm" spin you put on it.

  • Journaling accounting system. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BoomerSooner ( 308737 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @02:26PM (#7828942) Homepage Journal
    Or you could just build categories in quicken/money/gnucash? and print reports at the end of the year.

    I use Quickbooks for my business and those are my only writeoffs anyway.

  • My solution (Score:5, Funny)

    by mopslik ( 688435 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @02:28PM (#7828957)
    I file all of my bills in a circular metallic file, which I clean out weekly. It sure makes my bill-organization easier.

    Hold on, someone's pounding on the door...

    • Re:My solution (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Alrescha ( 50745 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @03:31PM (#7829457)
      "I file all of my bills in a circular metallic file..."

      Although funny, this is not far from what I do. I have an 8 1/2 by 11 computer paper box under my desk. Paid bills go into this box in chronological order. When the box is full, I throw it into the closet and get a new box.

      The only exceptions are tax-related items. There are so few of those, they don't even get their own box.

      A.
      (who used to keep things meticulously in folders, until he realized that no-one cared, including himself)
      • I used to work for a small busines that used a similar method, although they had a box for unpaid bills too. Once a month the bills from the unpaid box would be grabbed and paid (if there was money) and then thrown in the paid box. It actually worked out pretty well.
      • (who used to keep things meticulously in folders, until he realized that no-one cared, including himself)

        Gods yes... if it's not tax-related or warranty-related or expense-account, it gets paid, shredded then tossed. Tax-related, etc., stuff gets scanned and filed by year (which is easy enough to dig through a single year).

        Tax receipts go in a 9 1/2" x 11 1/2" envelope (1 for each year), tax forms go in a 2nd and both envelopes go into the firesafe.

  • Sorting Algorithms? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Nasarius ( 593729 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @02:28PM (#7828960)
    This really has nothing to do with sorting algorithms, unless you're using a database or something. No, you're talking about a very small data set (in CS terms) that you just have to organize in a way that best suits your needs. You haven't provided nearly enough information for anyone to make a serious suggestion.

  • Insertion sort? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by roll_w.it ( 317514 )
    Always put your bills in order as you put them into your folders.

  • counterstrike (Score:4, Funny)

    by schnits0r ( 633893 ) <nathannd&sasktel,net> on Monday December 29, 2003 @02:30PM (#7828974) Homepage Journal
    With all the CS people out there studying sorting algorithms

    I dind't know that people who played counterstrike would be studying in this feild.

  • binary search tree. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Cow herd ( 2036 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @02:30PM (#7828976) Homepage
    It's quite simple. Just take a hole punch, and punch two holes into your root-node bill. Each subsequent bill will take three holes (parent, and leaf nodes) Then, chose your sorting schema (dollar amount, utility name, month name, whatever) and simply tie the bill to the appropriate leaf node with a piece of string. Fast indexing, and fast retrieval. Voila.

  • I use a 3in binder (Score:3, Informative)

    by space_biker ( 229319 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @02:32PM (#7828986) Homepage
    I use a large binder to keep things together. The bills get hole-punched and inserted into the appropriate section and when you're ready to file the old ones, they're easy to access.
    Things like credit card receipts are paper-clipped or stapled to the invoices that they were charged to.
    I don't think it's the best right now, but it works better than our previous (non)filing system.

    • Great idea! (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This is a great idea (hole punching). I used to use this to organize my floppy disks. Now I use it to keep my CD's organized.

  • Why sort (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Uma Thurman ( 623807 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @02:33PM (#7828991) Homepage Journal
    There's not really much need, is there? When a new bill comes in, you can put it on the stack of bills that need to be paid. When the bill is paid, you can shove it in a big box, right on the top.

    This procedure has a couple benefits. It's simple, taking no time or thought to implement. Plus, the big box implements a stack. If some bill needs to be discovered for some reason (a rare event) you will discover that the stack is mostly sorted in chronological order with the newest bills on the top.

    When solving any problem, it's important to ask yourself what level of implementation effort is necessary. There's only one reason to go into the box of past bills: to find an old bill. A manual search through the pile won't be appreciably speeded when the pile is fully sorted by date and category, so why go through that effort? Just as good is the nearly cost free implementation of a *nearly* sorted stack of bills.

    Of course, I am making the assumption that you are sorting bills to solve some sort of real-world bill-paying problem, and not a problem that a particular personal compulsion for neatness might raise (i.e. neatness/categorization obsession).

    • Re:Why sort (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Otter ( 3800 )
      It's simple, taking no time or thought to implement.

      And that's the crux of the matter -- any system you'll actually follow is better than any system you don't. The key to any bit of household organization is making it fit you.

  • Do you ever take the bills out? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @02:34PM (#7829007) Homepage Journal
    Just curious, do you ever come back to them? I started to be that organized, then I realized they never come back out, so I stuff them all into a big envelope at the end of the year. In recent months, I have most of my bills come to my email account instead.

    I guess what I'm saying is "I need more info" before I can suggest a method that is helpful to you. One major ingredient to how you sort is how you intend to retrieve it. I'm reasonably certain that anybody who's ever written a search algorithm will give you a similar answer.

  • Multi-level caching based on access patterns (Score:5, Insightful)

    by swillden ( 191260 ) * <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Monday December 29, 2003 @02:35PM (#7829016) Journal

    What are your access patterns? Is this data just stored away and rarely, if ever, referenced again? Or do you frequently need to find it? Sorting, indexing and searching all require effort, but you can trade off sorting and indexing effort against search effort.

    Also, you don't necessarily have to have a single solution for all data elements. Stuff that is likely to be needed frequently and/or soon can be cached in fast-access storage, stuff that may be needed can be placed in slower storage, stuff that almost certainly won't be needed can be placed in archival storage and stuff that definitely won't be needed can be discarded.

    FWIW, here's my solution: I use a computer (and Quicken, though there are many workable alternatives -- that's just the one I started using 15 years ago) to provide quick access to all of my financial information. 99% of the time, all I need to know is who, what, when and how much, and the computer provides all of that. Additionally, there's plenty of incentive to keep it up to date, since doing so helps me answer the rather important question "Do I have any money?". It's also pretty easy, given I can download and automatically import bank and credit card statements.

    For managing the paper, I use a multi-level storage approach. I have a "to hold" file that is my fast-retrieval cache, for things that I know I'll need soon. I keep two files and a box for each year. One file is "tax-related stuff", the other is "warranty-related stuff" and the box gets everything else, in a random, completely disorganized jumble. Retrieval of stuff in the box is slow, but since it's basically LIFO-structured, more recent stuff is easy to find, which fits common access needs, and I really don't get in there very often anyway. Any need to reach into the box represents a cache miss, and I try to adapt my caching algorithms to minimize those (without overloading the cache, of course).

    I keep the last four years' tax and warranty files in the filing cabinet. At the end of each tax season, the previous year's box moves to archive storage in the basement. When a given years' tax and warranty files move out of the filing cabinet, they go in their corresponding box in the archive. Every few years I go through the boxes, and any that are more than 10 years old (7 is really adequate) get shredded.

    The computer-based data, however, is permanent. I put backups in a safety deposit box. I expect it will frighten me in 30 years to see just how much money I've made and spent in my lifetime.

    • I have a system very similar to this and others listed.
      • I have a pile that I still need to deal with
      • I enter all bills in Quicken as I pay them
      • I put all paid bills in to a big box, adding them from the front (like a stack, and mostly sorted by date)
      • I also keep separate tax related boxes (that I can compare against Quicken records when needed)

      In addition:

      I also use something akin to this [officedepot.com] or this [officedepot.com] for keeping receipts. You can usually find one of these smaller expanding files with each pocket labeled

  • Physical paper? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @02:37PM (#7829032) Homepage
    Asking techies about paper for archiving is like asking the phone company how to communicate using tin cans and string. Go paperless!

    I run my life as paperless as possible. I use electronic statements whenever available, and I scan the remaining paper. It takes me about 15 minutes per month. I have a CD with all my taxes, bank statements, car repair history, etc. back to about 1994. I keep a copy at home, and a copy at a remote location just in case.

    As for sorting, I name the files by the date, and place them in folders based on the institution. It's not searchable without knowing the date, but I don't care. OCR could solve this, but I don't consider it worth the time.
    • Nothing (OK, almost nothing) is more reliable than paper.

      Paper technology does not change every ten years.

      Paper does not become unreadable in 7 years (like CD-Rs).

      That's what's great about paper.

      • Okay, I'll bite: Why do you need to have a copy of your electric bill from more than seven years ago?

        I used to be seriously obsessive/compulsive about filing paid bills, bank statements, credit card statements, and so forth. Then, about two years ago, as I was doing my year-end clean-up (moving everything from hanging folders into labeled manilla envelopes, moving said envelopes into a storage cabinet), I suddenly realized that I hadn't yet needed a single piece of paper that was more than two months old,

    • http://www.paytrust.com

      I forward all my bills to their PO BOX, they open them, throw out the confetti, scan the actual bills and destroy the originals. Standard Billpay features kick in, and I can assign rules for payment (including mailing bills 5 days before their due... email messages notify me of their actions. Its cheaper than late fees.

      At the end of the year $20 gets me a CD with all the scanned bills ...fits nicely in my Tax folder.
  • Internal bills:
    rent/mortgage, electric, gas, etc.

    External bills:
    car payment, credit card(s), cell phone, etc.

    Of course, this comes from someone who hasn't balanced his checkbook (between ATM receipts and online banking - why bother?) since 1997 or so.
    • Of course, this comes from someone who hasn't balanced his checkbook (between ATM receipts and online banking - why bother?) since 1997 or so.",/I>

      It appears we have a United States Senator among us! Welcome to Slashdot!
  • Worked for me. Haven't looked at a bill in 2 years and going. She handles the bills way better than I ever did.

    Alternatively, you could just scan them all and put them into HTML, and then search them with google.

    Especially your credit card statements... :p
  • It does not matter where you put the bills. What matters is when you do it. I try never to touch a bill more than once. When I get the bill (or statment) I take the actions to pay it then I punch the statement with my 3 hole punch and put it in a binder. I takes less time (often none at all becase I am waiting on something else anyway) This way I don't forget to pay and I never have to look at a bill again sort sort or resort it.
  • Just connect into the TIA [epic.org] (Defense Department Total Information Awareness system) and search on your name. You will find all record of anything you ever spent anywhere contained therein.

  • Sorting? I need an system for _disposal_. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @02:54PM (#7829192) Homepage
    I mean, I just realized last year that in the basement I had six shoeboxes containing twenty-five years worth of cancelled checks, invoices and receipts.

    I tried to go through them, but realized that I didn't really have any quick, easy, reliable way to decide which could be safely thrown out. Sure, 95% of them were easy. Most bills and cancelled checks only need to kept for long enough to resolve any mixups. But the rest were fairly hard.

    Tax returns? I think the answer is supposed to be that you don't need to keep them after ten years.

    And in the really old ones, I realized that I was fascinated by the changes in the look of bills, receipts, and checks. The oldest ones were printed in ink with chaintrain printers, for example. Then they started to become laser-printed--in monospaced type. Then they acquired proportionally-spaced type. Then they started to get laid out with little boxes and sidebars and things...

    Up to about ten years ago I still got--what DO you call those anodized aluminum boxes they always used to have on the counters of small businesses, containing what I think were continuous-form carbon receipts that might have been about 6 by 8 inches in size, onto which bills/receipts/invoices were written by hand? The typefaces popular for letterheads, business cards, and so forth have changed considerably over the years.

    But I digress. What algorithms and rules of thumb do people use for deciding what bills can be thrown out? Pardon me, of course I meant shredded.

    (And please don't tell me to "just scan them..." then I need to fret about archival media and whether CD labels rot CD-R's and whether Blu-Ray DVD drives will be able to read CD-R's and how to assign them file names and... oh, my aching head)
    • I'm answering this as a part of my own therapy program...

      Is there really any sense in keeping bills that long (25 years)? Typically, with a bill you should only keep it long enough to ensure that no problems are going to arise. In my experience, it's pretty rare that (example) the electric company decides that I never sent them a payment, 6 payments ago.

      Just keep 3 boxes for bills:
      * One for warranty-related bills
      * Two for all other bills
      Use the "two for all other bills" thusly (call them 'A' and 'B':
      * A
      • Aieeee! No!

        Do not dispose of all bills (and by that I presume you mean anything related to your financial life) after 3 months.

        Retirement plan annual summaries should be kept forever. Ditto for annual mortgage summaries (once you've verified they're correct). Anything related to fraud should be kept forever as well -- and I do mean forever. Most bills/statements can be shredded immediately or after a short period, but realize that if you ever want to get a significant loan (like, oh say, a mortgage) they


        • Do not dispose of all bills (and by that I presume you mean anything related to your financial life) after 3 months.

          Retirement plan annual summaries should be kept forever. Ditto for annual mortgage summaries (once you've verified they're correct).

          No, I meant bills specifically (ie, things that impelled me to give somebody some money.) There are some things that I do keep much longer. 401k annual summaries, for one. However, despite my own behavior it seems to me that, as long as it's correct, the on

        • but realize that if you ever want to get a significant loan (like, oh say, a mortgage) they may ask for the statements from the last 6-12 months on all your accounts.

          I've refinanced my mortgage several times. No one has ever asked for anything but paystubs.

          Unless it's tax related, I keep the paid bills in a pile for a month or two in case a problem comes up, than zip! Down the shedder.

          • Not for a refi, no, but starting a new mortgage is different. Think about it -- for a refi the lender is not assuming any additional liability (you may be shifting the liability from one lender to another, but that's minor; the original lendor vetted you already), while for a new mortgage you're essentially an unknown quantity. The requirement for back records may only be needed for a first home purchase -- I don't know. I do know that when I bought my house (first and current) that I had to produce 9 month
            • Well, I was a first-time, new-construction home buyer 2 years ago, and all my financier asked for was a pay stub. Perhaps these comments of yours aren't hard-and-fast rules, or perhaps my lender didn't feel the need for that level of due diligence (plausible, given that the mortgagor was the parent company of the builder.)

              They verbally inquired about the source of my down payment, but just they took my word for it.

        • Relevent FAQ for individuals [irs.gov]:

          How long do I need to keep certain records?

          Records such as receipts, canceled checks, and other documents that prove an item of income or a deduction appearing on your return should be kept at least until the statute of limitations expires for that return. Usually this is three years from the date the return was due or filed, or two years from the date the tax was paid, whichever is later. There is no period of limitations when a return is false or fraudulent or when no re

    • >Tax returns? I think the answer is supposed to be that you don't need to keep them after ten years.

      If you get audited, and the government finds errors, they can go back as far back as you ahve been paying taxes, as my Dad found out.

      Good thing he had laid a trap for them. The first errors they found were such that they owed him... Like not claiming a charitable deduction that ended up being several hundreds of dollars. They went back to the church that it was given to and got a receipt.

      It was a lar
    • For whatever it's worth a bank is required to hold information for seven years. Anything older than that can, and probably will be, destroyed. I don't know if this holds true for individuals, but it seems like a good rule of thumb to follow.

      -sam, works in a bank, doesn't balance his checkbook.

    • I asked my accountant about this, he said that the statute of limitations on unpaid taxes is 7 years, so you aren't legally required to keep your personal spending records (checks and paid bills) more than 7 years. So ditch those 25 years of cancelled checks, unless you think you might want to refile an amended 1979 tax form (as if that would do anything for you). Of course, if the IRS or state says you have taxes still due from beyond 7 years ago, you better keep all those records. But in that case, you've
    • I worked as a cook at the local American Legion and met a lot of interesting retired people, They worked decades in one department, laundry soap (if they still make it "yes" is the best), tires (over inflate for snow), an amazing assortment of hard working middle class folks. TO MY POINT! this one guy worked for IBM forever and told me how when they developed the carbonless receipts using encapsulated ink, well he leaned over to me and said that the carrier for holding the ink was about 70% pure PCB,s. from
  • My algorithm is very simple: if (snailmail==bill) { toTrash snailmail; } Really. I pay bills using an online service through my bank. For bills that I can't get electronically, I still pay them using the service. So, there is a record of me paying the bill through the service along with account numbers, etc, and there is a record in my online check register of the money going out and to whom it was paid. And for bills that I do get electronically, there is all of the above plus the actual online copy

  • Big Pile Nad (Score:4, Funny)

    by Dr. Smeegee ( 41653 ) * on Monday December 29, 2003 @02:59PM (#7829232) Homepage Journal
    "I wait 3-6 months and get a big pile nad have to go about sorting it."

    Try draining your piles with a large diameter needle about once a week. This prevents the secondary scrota formation and makes riding a bicycle much more workable. If you have such a large abundance of pile nads that they require catalogueing, perhaps you need to need to seek out an apple corer or it's surgical equivalent.

    Thanks.

  • You think about the solution too much. (Score:3, Funny)

    by ewhenn ( 647989 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @03:01PM (#7829244)
    A wife is really great for this task. After all, women love to shop and handle money. Learn to exploit her natural talents.

    • Wife?!? (Score:1)

      by El ( 94934 )
      This is slashdot, you insensitive clod!


      P.S. My wife's "natural talents" have nothing to do with shopping or handling money. I have to handle all the bills myself. My wife handles... uh, something else. Perhaps in your family, it is the other way around?

  • Why bother? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ksheff ( 2406 ) *

    Why do you need to keep the bills? Are you going to use them to compare how your utility rates have changed over time? I've found that I usually only look at them once I get them in the mail and then again when I pay them. If they are kept, they usually get put in a drawer with lots of other old bills and never looked at again.

    Unless it is something like a medical bill where it's common to get charged multiple times, are you ever really going to need to see the details for your utility or cable bill eve

  • I divide bills/papers up by category...

    1) car
    2) house
    3)
    4) utilities
    5) monthly non-utilities (cell phone?)
    6) insurance (car/health separate)
    7) retirement

    Anything that is eBilled monthly, I paperclip together, along with a post-it saying when they were eBilled (confirmation screen printout optional) and file it under 'Monthly'. Other bills I pay get placed sans paper clip in the 'Monthly' folder. Car/house bills/papers have their own folders, ordered by when they came in (ie, i always put them in front).

  • Prepay/Shredder (Score:3, Interesting)

    by linuxwrangler ( 582055 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @03:13PM (#7829333)
    I hate paying bills so before I was married I would prepay my bills. Most (phone/cellphone/power/water) are so small that it costs me more in monthly stamps than I would lose in interest. I would generally write a check for at least 3 months rounded up to the nearest $100. Made checkbook balancing really easy. Each month I'd glance at the bill for correctness then file it. Saved lots of time. A friend of mine was more extreme. Every January he paid all his bills for the year in advance.

    Now my wife pays the bills and she is ruthless about getting rid of paper. Almost everything gets shredded immediately after being paid.

    I used to be paranoid about dumping stuff 'cause "I might need it someday" but I've gotten the bug and shredded lots of old statements and gained at least a foot of space in my file drawer. My desk is lots clearer and I can find the stuff I actually need to find lots faster.
    • That's how I do it. Why bother paying bills every month? Bills generally cost very little compared to EVERYTHING ELSE, I can pay bills for three months if I don't eat out or go to bars for a month.

      It feels really good to pay bills 'quarterly' rather than twelve times a year. You just have to be a bit on-the-ball about having the money when you need it.

    • My only objection to your method would be that you're missing out on the opportunity to let your money work for you. You're earning less interest (or fewer dividends) than you would if you paid your bills as they came. You'll also have less wiggle-room when unexpected expenses occur.

      I'm sure your utility companies love you, though; they get an extra couple of months to let their interest compound.

  • You need 4-6 files for this:

    Say you spend an hour each saturday dealing with bills. Each file represents the saturday you need to pay a bill by in order to make the due date. Each saturday you clean out the contents of one file. Pay the bills, sort them into whatever filing system you use (I like phone, gas/electric, city services, other - you don't need a file for each company/service combination - it makes it harder to go back, in fact).

    Keep these filed according to their due date. Each year tak

  • you just need discipline... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jeffy124 ( 453342 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @03:23PM (#7829395) Homepage Journal
    it sounds like you have a good filing system already, but lack the discipline to stick to it. you'll probably find a large number of people who file by month, and a large number who file by account. I myself am sorta a both. I keep monthly bills by account, and keep store credit/debit card receipts by month.

    pick a filing system you like and get yourself into the habit of sticking to it in January, and dont let teh papers keep piling up into june.

  • 1) Bigger shoeboxes

    2) File above after 7 (seven) years.



  • My solution to the problem of too many bills was to quit buying so much crap. Once you quit letting the marketing department run your life, you'll be surprised how many other problems are also resolved.

  • Easy (Score:4, Funny)

    by RealityMogul ( 663835 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @03:52PM (#7829623)
    Eliminate most of the unnecessary filing by throwing away the "normal" white envelope monthly bills. Wait for the yellow certified "disconnection" envelopes to come in and then sort those by shutoff date. As you pay them one day prior to shutoff, throw them away.
  • Mr. Gates, you're here.
    Mr. Nye, sit here.
    Mr. The Cat, please sit outside.

  • Try a payment service (Score:3, Informative)

    by SkywalkerOS8 ( 398450 ) <brianNO@SPAMjaxzin.com> on Monday December 29, 2003 @03:56PM (#7829668) Homepage Journal
    Try using a payment service like PayTrust [paytrust.com]. All of your bills go to them and are scanned in and presented online. At the end of each year they offer to send you a CD with all of the bills for the year. The CD they send is browser-based but has a light Java app that acts as a local web server, allowing you to perform searches and sorting of the data through your browser. I've been using them(actually I started with paymybills.com which was bought out by them) for 4 years now and haven't regretted it once. I just ordered my 2003 CD which includes my 2000, 2001 and 2002 records. About half of my bills are delivered to them electronically now so those are HTML instead of JPEGs.
  • Just have 2 boxes, 1 marked "20th century" and 1 marked "21st century." Much easier, and you only have to buy a new box every 100 years :)






    And, yes, the "21st century" box would of course contain all bills starting with January 1, 2001

  • The only algorithm needed here is. 1. Get off your lazy b**t. 2. File the bill into it's right folder. 3. Pause for a month. 4. Go back to step 1. Osho

  • I had this same problem (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mc6809e ( 214243 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @04:08PM (#7829754)
    I created a spreadsheet to solve this problem.

    In the first column I have dates. In the next column the current bank account balance. In the next columns I have money in/out. This includes paychecks, mortgage, student loan payments, credit card payments and a column for other expenses.

    Most of these dollars in/out columns is setup so that it checks the date in column A. In the case of a paycheck, it checks the day mod 14 (income every two weeks). In the case of the mortgage, it checks to see if the day of the month is the 6th and not a weekend, etc. Some checks are complicated like my water bill-- the due date is the Friday between the 3rd and 9th of each month. I also have to estimate certain payments ahead of time.

    Then, all these columns are added together accross the same day and carried over to the next day's current account balance.

    It works great. Whenever a check comes in, I just open the spreadsheet, look at everything coming due according to the spreadsheet, and payit. It even lets me see when I've got to carry money in my account over several pay periods to cover automatic widthdraws from my account for things like the mortgage payment.

    When new bills come in, I just update my estimates in the spreadsheet or add the amount the other expenses column. When I have take money out of the account to pay for things like groceries, I use a debit card and update the spreadsheet when I get home.

    Now you might ask how this solves the problem of getting rid of those paper bills. The key is to create one sheet of paper with all the information you need to handle electronic payments -- things like URL's, etc. When you get paid, go online with this sheet and pay everything you can electronically. I'm to the point now where I only have to write maybe one or two checks a month to pay for things. I keep one small stack of bills that go into this category. It's so small a stack, I don't bother with things like file folders.

  • I usually file mine into the trashcan. Of course, I just got evicted from my apartment, and my cellphone is cut off, but that's just coincidence. Right?

  • Paytrust (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Illusion ( 1309 )
    I haven't touched a bill in a few years. I pay $10/mo to paytrust.com (who bought paymybills.com, which I was using) to open, scan, type in relevant numbers and dates, and archive my bills. They then automatically pay most of them according to rules I have set up.

    This is a far superior system to just ignoring everything but the pink bills (past due notices), which was what I was using before. :) $120/yr is way less than I was paying in late fees, so it is a bargain for me.

  • Been a long time user, now it is one of the reasons I run Windows.

    With the bill pay, one can schedule in the payments, and then let the paperwork pile up for a while.

    Hopefully there is a FLOSS program out there that does the same things, but Quicken is the gold standard for personal finance IMHO.
    • Agreed, between online bill payment and auto-deduction (and yes, I have multiple checking accounts thank-you-very-much in case I get drained), I use about 1 stamp per month on average. (Have to mail those quarterly estimated tax payments.)

      Only 2 bills require any monthly action on my part, soon to be down to none again. Takes me longer to fill out my expense account each month then to download transactions weekly and take a quick gander to make sure everything balances (and that I have enough funds for
  • Put them in a bucket according to some hash values (*ahem* months?), and then sort each bucket seperately. Lather, rinse, repeat. Wow, it's so brilliant I think it's already called a Bucket Sort. AND if you're careful with your piles, it's stable too!
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I do the same thing (the .png files)

      Been musing about this with php for a while now, mainly so I know what bills I've paid at home, and which I've paid at work :)

      Maybe I'll get there one day.
  • "I'm don't think I'm going to do that either. I never liked bills much."
  • I know we're talking different bills, but...
    Five twenties (preferably new and crispy) creased perfect down the center, stacked, and folded in half as a hundred stack is simply great. $2500 makes a nice short brick. ~$3200 makes a nice cube.
    Come on, can you think of a better way to count twenties?
  • I use per-month folders and that's worked pretty well for me; the main benefit being that I actually put the papers in the folders. On the rare occasions I've needed to find some scrap of paper, rummaging through a month or two's worth of stuff isn't too bad.

    The only drawback I found was at end of year when I wanted to sort out my business expenses so I could deduct them. My solution: two sets of monthly folders: yellow for business, green for personal.

    Also, for those fellow geeks who have trouble keeping

  • Excellent opportunity for Mozilla extension (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tim Macinta ( 1052 ) <twm@alum.mit.edu> on Monday December 29, 2003 @06:31PM (#7830943) Homepage
    I too have a large stack of bills that I sort through about once or twice a year and for that and many other reasons I have been wanting to switch to paying my bills online for quite some time now. The problem is that with online bills I would procrastinate just as much which is a serious problem because a lot of companies that I use only keep invoice records for the past X number of months (usually around 3 - 6). Most of my bills are business expenses and I consequently need to keep records of them, so I have chosen the lesser of two evils and continue with snail mail invoices so that I'll have everything kept around for my records even if I don't have time to load, save, and verify several dozen different web pages each month.

    What I would absolutely love to have is a "recording mode" in Mozilla so that I could ditch the snail mail invoices forever. The way it would work is that you would click a "record" button on Mozilla to enter recording mode and then every page that you look at would be permanently archived for later user, including all page prerequisites (images, etc.), and all form data. Then, merely by paying my bills online, I would automatically get a permanent, electronic record without having to manually save the pages (which doesn't always work right anyway because some sites force cache expiration). Even better, Mozilla could detect that I normally record my visits to American Express, for example, and automatically ask me if I want to start recording the next time I visit, so that I don't even have to remember to click the "record" button.

    I submitted this as a feature request to Bugzilla [mozilla.org], but it could use some more people to vote for it. I would probably even pay a nominal bounty for this feature, though I don't have time to write up exactly what I want at the moment, so I'm just hoping that somebody else has the same itch.

    • It looks like Bugzilla has disabled links from Slashdot. So, you can cut and paste http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=217686 (remove any spaces that Slashdot's lameness filter adds) or you can search for bug number 217686.

  • Better bill management with gravestones (Score:3, Funny)

    by Sevn ( 12012 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @06:50PM (#7831076) Homepage Journal
    I find it much easier and much cheaper to move every six months and change my name every 12 months. It's as simple as picking a name on a gravestone, and filling for a tax ID number for a business by that name. It will run you about 1500 grand for the entire process and that does add up, but it's a lot cheaper than actually making car and house payments! Like I'm going to fork out the 3 grand a month they want for this condo. It's ridiculous. The 15 grand a month I make from spam is more wisely spent on hookers and drugs. Take it from me, paying bills is for suckers.

    -- Gene Siskel

  • I had piles and piles and bags full of bills and mail until I found the perfect solution to organize my paperwork !!

  • repeat
    get(bill)
    pay(bill)
    delete(bill)
    until (hell freezes over)
  • I got a desk with two drawers. During the year I pile up the bills on the desk.
    On the first of the month I pay all the bills and sort them into drawers: business in the left, personal in the right one.
    Every year at the tax time I take two plastic garbage bags, empty drawers into them, mark them with a post-it indicating the year and throw them into the attic.
    And the cycle starts anew.
  • When dealing with data storage, you have to look at how and when you attempt to retrieve data. If you only have to look through your records once a year, and it takes 2 hours to go through it, it's not efficient to sort anything if it's going to take you more than 2 hours per year.

    Now, yes, there are issues with risk, and that if you have reason to go through the records twice as often, then it becomes worthwhile to index, but likewise, if you have no reason to go through the records, you're wasting time
  • Store them in the recycle bin ("trash" if a mac user)
  • Sort bills in order of denomination. Make sure the bills are all aligned and none of them are upside down in the stack, keep the portraits of the presidents facing UP when you put them in your wallet.
  • Get one of these [officedepot.com] for your desk. Mark the first folder as "current" or "unpaid".
    Create additional folders for "Bank1", "CreditCard1", "CreditCard2", "Autoloan", "WishIHadAHomeLoan", "PhoneBill", "Gas & Electric", "Cable", "Internet", "LongDistance", "ParkingGarage" etc.
    - When bills come in, place them in the "current" folder.
    - Come pay day, sit down, pay bills, write checks etc.
    - - After paid, strip unecessary garbage from the bill e.g. envelopes, ads, credit card checks
    - - Staple that bill
  • Personally, I have stopped receiving almost all of my paper bills in favor of "electronic" ones. Some are linked straight to my bank where I can review them and pay them right out of my account, others are more of an "email/website" type ("This month's bill is now available at ..."). Makes life much easier at the end of the month.

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