Now that I'm paying significantly more rent — without an accompanying significant raise in income — I have to be much more vigilant about how bills are paid. I am paid just enough per month to clear all the bills, but the first paycheck of the month is not enough to cover them all.
(On some months, said paycheck was indeed insufficient to cover them, but more times than not, I could blow one check on bills, the other on whatever.)
In the past, I would pay all bills at the first of the month, regardless of when they were due. Then I got laid off in 2002, and I paid bills as close to their due date as possible. I came to prefer this method of payment because, really — why should the payees get my money any sooner than they need it?
This method will no longer work with kind of expenses I now accrue. So it's back to the first-of-the-month method but with a significant twist.
Starting this month, I'm splitting the balances of my bills in two, paying the first half of the bills with the first paycheck, and the second half of the bills with the second paycheck. It requires organization to use this method, but I'm nothing if not a few hand washes shy of extremely mild obsessive compulsion. (I doth protest too much, no?)
Some expenses will be easier to pay than others. The car loan and laptop loans have a set schedule and a regular payment, so I can anticipate those with ease. So too rent. The cable and phone bills are pretty consistent, insurance and water slightly less so. The electricity and credit card bills will be the hardest to predict.
I won't really know how effective this new technique will be, unfortunately, till July, if not the end of the summer. The next bills will have all sorts of transfer fees, and they won't be indicative of the true cost of living in the newer, bigger digs. I just have to hold out till October and November, when my office loosens the purse strings enough for mad holiday consumerism.