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Budget Tracking

hwebbjr says:
I'm hit-or-miss when it comes paying all my bills each month. I don't mind paying them, it's just that the task is large and spread out over the month. Therefore, it's easy to forget a bill or two or to forget an upcoming debit and spend too much before the bill is taken from the account, leaving me short. However, since using RTM to schedule my bill payments, forgetting is a thing of the past.

I first created a monthly list entitled, "Bills". Then, reviewing my last bank statement, I created a task for each bill payment due during the month, noting the payee, the date the payment is due or debited, and the amount. Here's what it looks like:

Pmt - Firestone Bill ($25)
Confirm - Mortgage Debit ($1,050)
Transfer - Food Funds to Ally Bank ($700)

I include the date I want to pay the bill in the date field, make it repeat every 1 month, tag it "bills", and include the URL that takes me to the online payment website for each bill.

Not only do I get a reminder of when to pay each bill, I also can do a search for payments due for the balance of the month to make sure I have adequate funds in the account (My search query: "tag:bills AND dueBefore:9/1", changing the query to the first day of the next month each time I do the search). The result is a list of the remaining payables for the rest of the month.

This also helps with bills that are due only a few times a year by changing the repeat interval to "every 3 months" or "every 6 months" or even "every 1 year". This makes my vehicle taxes (due annually), Sirius radio bill (due every 3 months) easy to track and remember.
Posted at 3:04am on August 26, 2013
shilonus says:
This is a great idea, thanks for the tip! :D
Posted 10 years ago
emily (Remember The Milk) says:
Hi hwebbjr,

Thanks for sharing your tip! :) You're this week's Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner, so we've added a free year of Pro to your Remember The Milk account.
Posted 10 years ago
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