bills

Twice Monthly Half Mortgage Payments Might Save You Money

9:00AM Lisa Hoover | Some financial planners advise making two half payments on your mortgage each month instead of one full sum. The idea is that homeowners will save thousands of dollars over the years in interest payments. Does this idea hold water? More »

Reminder: Why It’s Worth Double-Checking Your Credit Card Bills

6:30AM Adam Pash | It’s easy to mindlessly pay off your monthly credit card bill without giving much attention to what you were charged for, but the Consumer Reports Money Blog reminds us why it’s still important to double-check your credit card bill before paying out: More »

Visualise How Long The Things You Own Actually Own You

6:00AM Lisa Hoover | Big ticket purchases may seem like good ideas at the time, but when you break down how many hours a week you have to work to make your monthly payment on that flat screen, you may see it in a different light. More »

Avoid Late Fees By Batching Your Bills

6:00AM Lisa Hoover | Forgetting to pay a bill isn’t a sign you’re a slacker – you may just have too much on your plate to remember the due date of every single payment you have. Try batching your bills to get them paid on time. More »

BillsAreIn Makes Short Work Of Shared Living Expenses

5:30AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Who owes what and whether or not they paid can be a significant source of stress in a shared household. BillsAreIn is an easy-to-use tool for automating the process of bill-sharing and managing the house budget. More »

Telstra Ups Fees For Bill Payment

10:30AM Angus Kidman | If you pay your Telstra bill by wandering into the local post office, here’s a pretty powerful reason to dump that practice: from September 14, you’ll have to pay $2.20 for the privilege. More »

Telstra Bill Glitches Drive Dealers, Customers To Despair

10:30AM Angus Kidman | Telstra’s never had much of a reputation for billing efficiency (it took the better part of this millennium for it to offer single bills to customers), but despite investing billions in the process, it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. More »

De-Bee Tracks Shared Group Expenses

5:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | De-Bee is a simple and free web-based expense tracker. Sign up, invite friends, and share expenses more easily. You don’t even need to go through the hassle of having your friends sign up if they’ve already got Google Accounts. Once you and your friends are set up in a group, you can monitor transactions and money owed between friends/roommates/partners. While De-Bee is by no means a legally binding contract, and not a place to actually transfer money, it does provide an extremely simple interface for keeping tabs on group financial obligations. Thanks Jaron! De-Bee More »

Pay Bills Quickly To Manage A Two-Week Pay Schedule

1:06AM Kevin Purdy | Personal finance blogger Trent Hamm used to have one of those jobs that paid every two weeks, and he found himself treating the occasional “third check of the month” as a bonus. Looking back, he recommends anyone with similarly non-rigorous discipline to treat those paydays like a trigger: I adopted a routine of paying the bills every other Monday like clockwork. I’d collect all the bills in a consistent spot as they came in, then I’d sit down on bill paying day and go through them, knocking all of them out. If I had more bills than cash, then I tapped my emergency fund a bit, but with the further tactics below, it wasn’t long before that wasn’t a problem. To our paid-every-other readers: What tactics or routines did you adopt to avoid having your paychecks be spent upon arrival? Photo by RichieC. Personal Finance Management on a Biweekly Pay Schedule [The Simple Dollar] More »