Automating your personal finances is key to simplifying your finances. It is what I recommend to everyone. Automating makes things a lot easier as well as enables you to spend less time sorting your mail and paying your bills and more time doing the things you want to do. Yes automating your finances will change your life forever but you can not just automate and forget about your bills. Well you can but you may discover some additional charges several months later or worse you may end up having some services disconnected if you forget. I am not saying do not automate your finances but I am saying you want to put some checks and balances in place to monitor your finances to make sure everything is working as planned. Here are some things you want to put in place to make sure everything is working properly when you automate your personal finances.

REVIEW YOUR STATEMENTS – reviewing your monthly statement to make sure the bill payment was received on time and you did not incur any late fess. Also want to make sure the payment date you established for the payment to go out provides enough time so it is processed on time. Many times we just pay the bill since it automated without reviewing the bill. After its paid its to late to dispute but you can always try.

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We all love to use credit cards for their convenience but are you using them to help simplify your personal finances or is your credit card usage making your personal finances more difficult.  For example, we sometimes forget to make that monthly payment or our balance keeps getting larger and larger and we feel overwhelmed.  The only way to stop the bleeding is to stop using the credit card completely.  However, if you use your credit card properly you will not have to stop using the credit instead you can use the credit card to your advantage.  It can even become a valuable tool to use to simplify your personal finances.

Here is what you need to do to make sure you are practicing good credit card usage:

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We all see them and we are all tempted by them. But in order to simplify your personal finances you must say no thank you and avoid them. Financial teasers are those incentive offers to get you in the door by offering a great rate or some gift that you just can not resist.

These financial teasers are everywhere from your local bank offering a great rate on a CD or saving account to a national bank offering a free MP3 player when you open a qualifying account to department store offering zero interest for several months when you apply for their credit card.

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