Do you have a system to track your expenses and have complete control of your personal finance?
If you, stop reading this article.
Personal finance habits for students in USA are typically acquired and sometimes they are messy. Schools don’t teach about managing income and expenses.
When you control the money flow, its easy to save and pay-off student loan.
Typical new college graduate in his/her first job, will have income flow chart that looks like the following.
Money Flow – Control Chart
Tracking Bill Payments
- Step 1 – What bills are paid
- Step 2 – How bills are paid
- Step 3 – Track bill payment in spreadsheet
Take a spreadsheet to list all the expenses and bills you pay.
Expenses and Bill tracker
Make sure you list all possible expenses and how you pay them.
Your goal is to automate the payments and take control of your expenses.
Some expenses cannot be paid via credit card. So, you can link your checking account for automatic payment plan.
I’m not talking about saving money in this article. You can read 100 money saving tips for students.
When bill payments are automated, you are less likely to have any late payments.
Update this sheet when you get new monthly or quarterly or yearly bills or make changes to the payment account.
Try to have the same billing date for all your credit cards. It makes it easier to keep track of them. Pick your preferred date and call the credit card company to change the billing date.
Now, you get the idea about tracking all the bills in one place.
Do you have any questions about tracking the bill payments or any other questions related to personal finance?
Comments
Great advice, as usual. I am also a huge fan of Mint.com. If you are building a life in America and you have American-based accounts this is an amazingly powerful (and free) tool to help you take control of your finances.