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Paying Bills w/ RtM + Evernote

mcgaritydotme says:
Thanks to the latest integration between RtM and Evernote, I am able to keep up better on my bills and payments with the following system.

I get paid twice a month (1st and 15th). With a newly-expanded family, money is tight, I use this system to review my income/expenses every two weeks & make sure we're not blowing the budget.

For my purposes, I setup a single Evernote note called "Bimonthly Budget Updates" which contains a checkbox list for the following:

-- Review monthly budget: both confirming it on the 1st & double-checking on the 15th
-- Add ad-hoc expenses: stuff that doesn't occur each month. For example, birthday gifts, HVAC seasonal inspections, etc.
-- Key auto-bill payments into checking register: here, I keep a list of debts I pay like bills, credit cards, etc. At the 1st of the month, I key them all into Mint (which I use to manage finances), so I know 30 days in advance where my money is going

Thanks to the RtM integration, if I assign a reminder date in Evernote, it appears in RtM with the same date!

My process is this:
-- On the 1st, I can see the RtM task is due. I click RtM's Evernote icon to launch Evernote Web
-- In Evernote, I unmark all of the checkboxes, so I know to go through each/every task for the new month
-- When complete, I change the Evernote reminder to the 15th
-- RtM's task updates to be due on the 15th
-- On the 15th, I see the RtM task is due again, and I repeat these steps to ensure I'm on-track for the month

I previously used to do all of this work via multiple RtM tasks. I like this method better because Evernote acts like "sub-tasks", and I can manage just one task in RtM -- multiple RtM tasks = noise that distracted me from other non-budget tasks.

Another advantage of using Evernote is keeping a conversation log, when I have to talk with banks, credit cards, etc. I just record the details of my conversations in the same note as my budget tasks. So I have a one-stop shop for all of my financial activity. And I remember to get it done thanks to RtM mooing at my on my computer & iPhone! :)
Posted at 12:12pm on November 7, 2013
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