The following is a guest post from our good friends over at freefrombroke.com. Please be sure to visit their site and subscribe to their RSS feed for more great content! Thanks guys!
Make Sure You Know The Due Dates On Your Bills Before Leaving On Vacation
You had a great time. Maybe the best vacation you’ve had in a while. And boy did you need it with everything going on at work and such. As you’re unpacking you see that envelope sitting there. You know it’s a bill that needs to be paid but you have plenty of time to pay it. Don’t you? You open it up, stunned to realize the due date passed while you were on vacation? D-Oh!
Has this happened to you? I know I’ve gotten real close a couple of times!
Here are some tips to help prevent you from missing a due date while on vacation:
- Pay the bill once you get it - This one is pretty straight forward. When you get the bill pay it. Or if you don’t normally pay your bills until the due date pay the ones you receive a few weeks before your vacation. If it’s paid then you can’t miss the due date!
- When you get your bill immediately write down the due date on it - This is for those of us who wait until the due date to pay. I learned this from an old employer who wrote the due dates on all the expense bills that came in. This helped him manage his cash flow and make sure his bills were paid on time. You can do it too! The big date on the bill helps remind you of the exact day it’s due. This will help you to get the bill taken care of before your vacation.
- Set up an automatic payment - Some companies allow you to set up payments online. If you don’t like automatically paying your bills you can set it up for just the month you’re going to be away. Just remember to de-activate it if it’s not already set up as a one-time payment.
- Set up an online calendar to remind you - You can use Google Calendar (or whatever works for you) to set up a reminder to email you a reminder to pay your bill before your vacation. Give yourself enough of a time cushion so you can get the bill in on time.
- Call the company and let them know you will be away - If you have been a good customer and you’ve paid your bills on time then they should let you move your due date until you come back.
You spend valuable time planning your vacation. Make sure your vacation doesn’t cost you with late fees.
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Thanks so much for the opportunity to contribute a guest post! Have a great vacation!
good post. I have certainly done this a few times. This is the reason i love online bill payment. Every time i receive a bill in the mail i setup the payment in the system. The problem i might face in the future is extended trips. Some bills you know the value but others you might have to over shoot a bit.
Great post, I know I’ve certainly made that mistake in the past! Nice site btw
FruGals last blog post..Good FruGal, Bad FruGal
Good advice
For me automatic payment is the only way to go. Once I receive the bill I double check it for mistakes and then I just file it. I don’t have the stress of needing to pay as I know that it is paid automatically.
It makes managing my cash a lot easier as I use one bank account for all bills and I can reconcile it at the end of the month.