Do you need a bill manager?
That’s right. Those bills don’t manage themselves. Household expenses are now a global epidemic. Everyone is suffering, and all we can do is search for ways to manage the pain.
We don’t want a bill manager. We need a bill manager.
And as your purveyor of online pharmaceutical tools, it is my responsibility to cure you of the mania that comes from trying to manage your costs alone.
The modern human brain is already subjected to many stressors. We need to drive a car, go to work, and eat. But we want to have the latest gizmos, and be immersed in our advancing world. We want to work and play, but blimey, who’s paying for all this? Um, we are.
Sometimes I look at how much money we spend on insurance in this house and I wonder if I could be happy living in a sterile padded room for the rest of my life. It would certainly cut costs…
But that’s not really the issue, is it? Most of the things we pay for are non-negotiable. Knowing my luck, I’d find a way to break my leg in that padded room, and then I’d have no insurance to pay for an ambulance. Rather than trying to eliminate important expenses, we need to look at how we manage those bills.
Even if you have superior personal management skills, you will still benefit from a top-notch bill manager. So how does a bill manager like TrackMySubs offer you the nutritional support to keep you in good bill management health?
1. Know Thy Self
What are you actually paying for each week, month, year? Do you even know? Have you taken a pen to that bank statement and seen what expenses are coming out each week? Well, this is your moment. Taking the first step is the hardest, and in this case, it’s not even that hard.
When you open your TrackMySubs account, start adding those subscriptions straight away. Think of every bill you pay. It’s not just Netflix and Foxtel, it’s electricity, gas, phone, water…you get the idea.
Heck, you can even set up your savings plan as a ‘subscription’ you pay so you can track how much money you’ve allocated to saving each week. Your land rates and grocery shop are also costs you need to manage. Be as thorough as you like.
When you know what bills you have, you can manage them efficiently.Once you input that knowledge into your TrackMySubs account you will get orderliness and control in return.
One of the biggest causes of stress in life, is fear of the unknown. When you are in control and have all the relevant knowledge, you are in a position of power over your financial situation.
2. Organisation
Once you’ve determined what your bills are, now’s the time to fine tune. Organisation is your best friend.
Categorising
One of the best features of any bill manager, and indeed TrackMySubs, is the ability to organise your subscriptions into categories.
If you’ve filled out all the details for each subscription carefully, you have some really great features to take advantage of.
You can organise your expenses into folder categories of your choice, like ‘Utilities’ or ‘Online Tools’: they are completely customisable. Then you’re able to use your ‘Reports’ function to view how much you’re spending within each folder category.
Any bill manager you use should have a function for categorising your bills. It’s vital. Just knowing you spend 3K a month on ‘everything’ isn’t going to get you very far.
Folders allow you to determine what areas of your life are sucking up all the money. Are you spending too much on streaming services? (um…NO) Too much on leisure activities? Maybe you’re not allocating enough to your savings account and need to increase it. (um…yes).
This was a really great feature for me. I have a ‘Recreation’ folder set up so that I can track how much we spend on frivolities. If we are struggling to manage our bills, I know I can go straight to my ‘Recreation’ folder and look at what things to cut back on.
Using these folder categories can help you prioritise your spending.
Tracking
The second part of organisation is preparation and planning. So your bill manager needs to have a ‘Calendar’ function and a ‘Reports’ function.
When you set up your bill manager you would have input all your debit dates and bill due dates. The TrackMySubs calendar lets you see what bills you have scheduled for the whole of the current month. If you’re the far seeing type, you can look at any future month to see what’s coming up.
And combined with the ‘Reports’ feature you can track your monthly spending, and your yearly spending for each category.
How cool is that? That’s next level bill management!
3. Save Your Money!
A great bill manager is going to SAVE you money. And lo, TrackMySubs has the perfect system for keeping you out of trouble.
The thing with bills and subscriptions, is they have all these annoying dates. Direct debit dates, rollover dates, expiry dates, etc. And they’re all different to each other. How on earth are you going to keep tabs on all these dates for a dozen or more bills?
A bill manager like TrackMySubs has an awesome alert function. You can set up an alert for practically anything. More than just checking your calendar for upcoming bills, you can also set TrackMySubs up to contact you (or anyone else) with custom alerts.
How about a reminder to transfer your Netflix payment onto your credit card? Maybe a 1 month warning your car insurance contract is about to rollover – now you have time to seek out a better deal. Do you have a free trial going that automatically starts debiting your credit card after the trial ends? Get a day before reminder so you can cancel the trial!
Does your room mate, Stacey, need to transfer you half the rent every week? Set up a custom alert that reminds her to pay you. Sweet!
If your bill manager knows what’s good for you, you’ll be able to design it to save you from unwanted expenditure.
Don’t allow the stress of bill chaos to drive you mad. There are no awards for keeping all this crammed in your brain.
Think of your bill manager as a little section of your sensible mind that you can review whenever you need to, but it doesn’t haunt you or take up valuable real estate. You do the set up, and the system does the work.
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