I Would Do, Have Done, Anything to Organize My Bills

Grrrr. Uggghhh. Blaaaahh. 

Today was going to be the day that I bragged about my little Excel spreadsheet I use to organize my bills. How did I not notice that $136.82 never left my bank account? That's a money dummy. Money is not real to me. I either have numbers in my account or I don't. All that's in between -- the relationship between balances and dates -- baffles me. 

Anyway, this awesome excel spreadsheet goes like this: Bills down the left column, organized by due date, months across the top. I fill in the date every time I pay the bill. Every time I get paid, I look and see which bills are due before the next paycheck, and I pay them. What's left is spending money for two weeks. This works perfectly, when I'm on a roll.

As you can see by the little red triangles, I sometimes put new comments on the cells I fill in, and putting in the confirmation number of my transaction. I now know I have to do that every time. Air tight!

The blue titles to the left are hyperlinks right to the web sites to pay. Every month, I pay my mom $45 for the phone plan she has me on. Good thing moms don't have late fees!

In that same Excel file, there's a graveyard of other worksheets. There's a plan for paying my mom back all the money she used to pad my fall to rock bottom last year. There's the budget for the salary I was making before I decided to "follow my heart" and move to Seattle two months ago. It doesn't quite go with my waitress tips. There's a checkbook system, where I swore I would write down every expense and track them later in categories. According to my records, this attempt to save my spending died on 3/3/11.

When I see that I've been late, again, when nothing seems to be working, I just want to throw my hands up and forget it. But you just have to get up again, dust off the late charges, and try something else. This money thing isn't going away.