There are two ways to approach a stack of bills. With a sense of dread or a sense of strategy. Guess which one pays off better? Approaching bills with a sense of strategy requires three things. A stack of bills, (that should be easy enough to find) a notepad and pen.
Instead of rushing through the bill paying process like a car speeding through a yellow traffic light, take the time to examine each bill. Look for anything that looks off about the bill. Like services that you shouldn't be paying for. One example would be if you have canceled a service and it still shows up on your credit card. I subscribe to several magazines. In a few instances I have received a subscription bill for a magazine that I never subscribed to! I suspect the companies who pull this stunt are hoping that I will get confused and automatically pay the bill thinking I had agreed to buy the magazine. If I never signed up to pay for something I don't pay for it
Another less obvious trap to be aware of are suspicious fees and rate increases that came with no prior warning. If your bank, credit card company or another business slaps you with a questionable fee call them and ask them to explain it. If there doesn't seem to be a legitimate reason for the fee or the fee seems horribly inflated, start looking for somewhere else to take your business. Feel free to tell the company throwing questionable fees at you that you are prepared to take your business elsewhere.
Look out for duplication of services among bills. One example would be if you belong to an automobile club like AAA that covers towing it might not be necessary to have a towing service included with your regular car insurance. If you subscribe to a DVD rental service or pay to download movies then paying for premium movie channels is redundant. Take a closer look at the things you are paying for and see if you can lower some bills by eliminating duplication.
Some bills are consistent and inflexible in their pricing. Pay those bills first so you can set them aside and focus your attention on the bills that you have more influence over. With other bill such as utilities, the amount of the bill varies depending on what resources you used that month. As you are paying these bills take a moment to stop and think about what small changes you can make to an lower that bill. Now take your pen and notepad and make a list of things you can do in your daily life to reduce energy costs for example. For lots of great ideas on saving energy visit consumerenergycenter.org. Apply this strategy to other bills and soon you will have consistently lower bills.
It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that there slightly increasing payments on things like credit card debt doesn't make much of an impact. If you charge the same amount every month and pay an extra $40.00 on your credit card bill every month, at the end of the year you would have paid an extra $480.00 down on you credit card. At 12% interest that $480.00 by itself is costing you $57.60 a month. To figure out where that $40.00 is going to come from look at the previous paragraphs.
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