Have you had a similarly frustrating experience when paying your bills or managing your finances? As part of National Moment of Frustration Day on Oct. 12, we’re sharing five things you can do to make managing your finances easier.
1. Automate your finances to minimize late payments.
Through auto-pay, you can rest easy knowing that your payments will be automatically charged to your credit card and you can avoid late payments.
2. Put due dates in your calendar.
If you’re like me, if something isn’t in your calendar, it doesn’t exist. I’ve found that putting reminders in my calendar helps me stay on top of my payment due dates, especially for bills that I can’t automate, and paydays.
Consider putting recurring reminders in your calendar (digital or physical) for the following:
- Your rent is due.
- Credit card payments are due.
- When you get paid from your employer.
- Netflix, internet, gas and electricity bills are due.
- How about when health insurance, renters insurance and other insurance bills are due.
3. Sign up for text or email reminders.
If you don’t want to manually put reminders into your calendar, you can check with your credit card company, mortgage servicer, auto loan servicer and/or student loan servicer about getting alerts for your due dates.
4. Enroll in credit monitoring.
Your credit score and credit report are important parts of your financial life. But keeping tabs on them may seem inconvenient or time-consuming. One way to make the process less frustrating is to enroll in credit monitoring.
Credit monitoring services can notify you if things on your credit report look suspicious, which could be signs of identity theft.
Additionally, these services can help you stay on top of your credit scores and reports and have a better understanding of the underlying influences that ultimately affect your credit.
5. Download a savings app to take the legwork out of saving.
If you find it difficult to save, you can download a savings app such as Digit to help you save effortlessly.
Digit looks over your accounts and, through its software, analyzes what you can put in a savings account. It then automatically transfers money from your checking account into a Digit savings account.
Some users love how easy it is to save, while others aren’t impressed by the fact that the savings account doesn’t earn interest.
If you want to earn interest and make saving easier, one option is SmartyPig, an online piggy bank that currently earns 0.75 percent annual percentage yield (APY).
If you’re interested in small-scale investing, you can use an app such as Acorns. Acorns rounds your purchases to the nearest dollar and invests your spare change.
Bottom line
Being an adult, paying bills and managing your money can be frustrating; there’s always one more thing to keep track of or one more bill to pay.
While managing your finances can be a frustrating process, these five tips can make things a bit easier.
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