what I do is write which bills need to be paid on each week on the calendar at my desk. For instance, I pay the electric bill and the car insurance the first week, the water bill and the phone bill the 2nd week etc and they are written on the calendar on every Friday.
MS Money is an easy program to use, it's cheap (compared to Quicken) and it works with Excel so I recommend it over some of the more expensive accounting style programs. it has lots of tools and charts that help plan your savings etc too. They offer a free 60 day trial download so you can check it out. You can get very technical on where the money goes, or lazy and put them all under "household" or "misc" Take some time to set it up well and it will give you great charts on 'where did the $$$ all go??'
http://www.microsoft.com/money/default.mspxI don't carry a checkbook at all, I buy laser printer checks (you can get a ton from Costco cheap) and use Money to print all the bills, that way it's easy to just pull up the vendor to see what you've paid them and when. Handy to have if there are disputes or issues. Money will also connect to the bank if you want it to, but I don't use that function and will balance your accounts. I can grab a couple checks to stick in my purse if I need them. I can then attach the check stub to the bill and file them by vendor in the file drawer in my desk
I have a set section of my wallet (right next to where I keep the cash) that I put all my debit card receipts when I go shopping, that way it's easy to grab them to enter them in Money. I put any recurring debits (such as my monthly DU donation) to automatically post 3 days before Skinner takes the cash. For big bills (such as the quarterly home insurance and taxes) I have Money automatically post that 30 days before it's due, so I can plan for it. But the virtual 'savings' I have had written out every week covers (see below) it fine and it's a good cushion to have in case I run short one week.
I have Money set up to automatically write out (I 'transfer' it to savings, but don't actually move the money) a set amount out of each check and have the checks automatically show as a deposit each week. Since the checks are the same amount every week, it saves me time every week. I also have it set up that hubby's checks are divided so that 10% goes into a separate savings account every week. If I don't 'see' it I can't spend it LOL. If your company offers direct deposit they probably will let you divide the payments to more than one account. You can do either a set $ amount or % depending on what you choose.
one other thing I do is divide the month by 4.3 to get the weekly totals that way I'm not short
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