Tackle it Tuesday - Organizing your Bills

Romans 13:7-8 (Amplified Bible) says:

⁷Render to all men their dues. [Pay] taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, and honor to whom honor is due.

⁸Keep out of debt and owe no man anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor [who practices loving others] has fulfilled the Law [relating to one's fellowmen, meeting all its requirements].

There's a job that not many of us women care to do too often - the never-ending job of paying bills. I prefer to leave that to my husband, but he prefers to leave it to me. Is that Biblical? I flip-flop on the issue. One thing that I do know is that, in our household, I am the more frugal of the two (putting it mildly) and I am generally more organized as well. Because my husband knows this, he transfers the responsibility of managing the checking account to me. That does NOT mean that I make the financial decisions. I inform him as to what bills there are and when they are due. He tells me what he thinks I should pay.

With the stack of medical bills becoming larger and the checking account slimming down, I decided I really had to get better organized. The above verses from Paul's letter to the Romans makes it quite clear that the Christian is to be diligent in the matter of paying debts. By organizing my debt load into a budget or "diary" I'll be more aware of what I owe to others and become less likely to spend what little I have before paying my bills.

This became my Tackle it Tuesday project.

I downloaded a free budget planner for the computer and began filling it in. It's harder than I thought, especially since there really isn't enough to go around.

I keep all of our bills in a large zipper storage bag in my desk drawer. They don't get lost that way. I also decided that paper billing is best for us because I tend to forget when due dates are. Also, there may come a time when we won't have internet service.

I also took all of the medical bills we've received so far in the months of March and April and copied them. Once I get all of them, I can submit them to a place that's helping us with just my husband's medical expenses for the surgery and pulmonary embolism - not to mention the sleep clinic. I clipped all of the medical bills together and put the copies in a file to submit. The originals are in the zipper bag.

I don't know if all the bills are in good order really, because there are so many of them and I feel like pulling my hair out. It'll get better, I'm told. I pray a lot.

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