How to keep track of monthly bills

A bill gets missed when the only record of it is an email you archived or a charge you noticed after the late fee. Tracking it means you can see what is due before the money leaves.

You do not need a budget spreadsheet for this. You need a list you will still open next month.

Write down four things

For each bill, record:

• Name. Something you will recognize when a reminder fires. “Electric,” not “Account 4491.”
• Amount. The usual amount is enough. If it changes every month, write last month’s figure and update it when the statement arrives.
• Due date. The date on the bill, not the day you prefer to pay.
• How often it repeats. Monthly covers rent, the phone, and most utilities. Some bills are weekly, every two weeks, quarterly, or once a year. A plumber or a moving deposit is once.

Add a short note only when you would otherwise forget how to pay it: which site, which card, which reference number.

Separate the ones that already pay themselves

Autopay and a reminder solve different problems. If rent, the car payment, or insurance already leaves your account, you still want it on the list so you can see the month. You do not need an alarm for it. Mark those as paid automatically on the due date and save the reminders for bills you have to send yourself.

If you are deciding which bills belong on autopay, the tradeoffs are in should you use autopay for bills.

Start with the bills that cost you when they slip

A complete history is how people abandon these lists. Start with the ones that charge a fee, report a late payment, or shut something off:

1. Rent or the mortgage
2. Credit cards, if you carry a balance or could miss the due date
3. Car payment and car insurance
4. Electric, gas, water, and internet
5. The phone
6. Any subscription you have already been surprised by

Add the next bill when it shows up. A monthly bills checklist is useful for the first pass so you are not relying on memory.

A due date on a calendar is easy to dismiss

Putting “rent” on the first of the month helps you see the week. It does not help after you swipe the notification away and mean to pay tonight. The bill is still unpaid. The alert is gone.

The reminder has to come back the next day, and the day after, until you mark the bill paid. One alarm on the due date is a nudge. A nudge that stops while the bill is open is how the late fee happens. More on that in how to avoid late fees.

A day or two of warning matters when you need to move money first. After the due date, the only status that should clear the reminder is paid.

Keep the list where you will see it

The list fails if it lives in a notes app you never open, or in an account you would have to recreate after you change phones. Pick one place, put the due dates there, and export a copy when you switch devices.

Billy is the list I use on an iPhone. You add the bill, set how often it is due, and it keeps reminding you until you mark it paid. Bills that already leave the account can mark themselves paid, so they stay on the list without an alarm. Nothing is uploaded, and a backup is a file you export yourself.

The list will not pay the bill. You still do that the way you already do. Its job is to make the unpaid ones obvious before the due date, and after it, until they are done.