Ahhhh, deadlines. Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em! No, no, that won’t work.
How about: deadlines hey, I mean, if they were pleasant, they’d be called lifelines! No, that sucks too. Look, I’m not some clown sent here to entertain you.
Scratch that, my boss has just handed me a note informing me that I am, in fact, a clown sent here to entertain you. Well, colour me embarrassed.
What I’m trying to get at is, deadlines are not fun! Hell, I’m on a deadline right now!! And while we’re discussing mind-blowing revelations, bills aren’t that fun either! So it’s kind of a double-whammy gut-punch of despair when they double-team you into a sobbing mess. And in front of your new girlfriend, no less. How sad.
But it doesn’t have to be this way, friend. You can win her back. How? By getting on top of your bill deadlines of course — and here’s how.
Lay it all out
Wouldn’t it be interesting if there was one universal ‘Bill Day’? When every single payment you had to make was due? Sure, the day itself would suck, however, you wouldn’t have to worry about forgetting a bill ever again. You would always remember Bill Day, for it would be a most dreadful day.
For better or worse, Bill Day is not a thing, and so the pain is spread out randomly across the month. How is one meant to remember all those dates? It’s a proven scientific fact that the human brain can remember like, three things, max.
So it’s best to set your cards on the table and take a solid look at all of your outflow. It’s much easier to make a game plan when it’s all laid out visually. So write it down or get creative; draw pictures, maybe make some cutouts, or little papier-mâché pigs and name them after each of your upcoming bills. You do you!
Set calendar reminders
This one is pretty straightforward. Simply chuck your upcoming bill payment dates in whatever app you use to track your schedule. If you don’t have a smartphone, well, then carve those dates into the walls of the cave you obviously live in.
Direct debit when you can
Lol why would I use my brain goo to remember bill dates when I could just set it up to happen automatically? Haha automatic payment go brrrr.
Of course, this will help with some of your bills, but not all of them. So let’s move on to our next point.
Enlist help
Look, no one can do everything on their own. Economist Milton Friedman once famously said that no single human can make a simple pencil. Sounds wild, right? But he makes a solid argument:
“The wood from which it is made, for all I know, comes from a tree that was cut down in the state of Washington. To cut down that tree, it took a saw. To make the saw, it took steel. To make steel, it took iron ore. This black centre — we call it lead but it’s really graphite, compressed graphite — I’m not sure where it comes from, but I think it comes from some mines in South America.”
“This red top up here, this eraser, a bit of rubber, probably comes from Malaya, where the rubber tree isn’t even native! It was imported from South America by some businessmen with the help of the British government. This brass ferrule? I haven’t the slightest idea where it came from. Or the yellow paint! Or the paint that made the black lines. Or the glue that holds it together. Literally thousands of people cooperated to make this pencil.”
What’s the point of all this pencil talk? Well, if you can’t make a simple pencil, then how are you meant to remember deadlines on your own??
The solution? Enlist a friend — a trusted confidant, tell them the date of your deadline, and ask them to come and punch you in the face on that day — if — you haven’t yet paid your bill. That’ll teach ya.
Or, you know, you could just use the CommBank app and avoid all this nonsense. There’s a nifty lil feature on the app called Bill Sense, and it basically predicts upcoming bills for you, so you don’t have to suffer from bill shock. Which is rather lovely — much better than a punch in the face by one of your nearest and dearest.
