I love to pay my bills online. Not only does it save me up to five bucks a month in stamps (that’s at least one and a half mochas a month!) but it is also a quick and easy way to get the job done. No worries about ordering checks, getting payments in the mail, or wondering if it gets there in time.
But, keeping track of all the accounts and passwords can be tricky. And since I am the one who handles the bookkeeping in our family, I knew that it would be a veritable labyrinth for FishPapa to figure things out if something should ever happen to me.
A few weeks ago I spent what seemed like half a day gathering all of our account information into a spreadsheet. I’m sure there are plenty of tracking books you can buy out there to serve this purpose, but I didn’t want to spend the money. You can download my form for your own purposes here.
Stored in a binder with our budget sheet and the bills to be paid, it ensures that I have at my fingertips everything I need to see where we stand financially. Better bookkeeping – it works for me!
To see what works for others, check out Rocks in my Dryer every Wednesday.
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We struggled with this for a long time, keeping ours in an address book, alphabetized by site. Then we found an electronic solution.
KeePass has a free downloadable software for managing your software. The passwords are organized in folder/subfolders as fits your needs. It will even create a secure password for you. One nice thing is you can click and drag to the login boxes. You use one password to keep your collection of passwords safe. We keep it in a shared file so that we can access it from any of the computers on our network.
What a great idea. I have them all randomly stored on the backs of papers stuck in my “binder” that has everything in my life in it! You are so right when you say how necessary this is, just in case, because we do want our families to be able to make it without us if they had to. Thanks for this great suggestion. Keep them coming!
Oooo, I’ve wondered that, too. What would DH do if something happened to me? My computer files are all over the place. Good plan!
Thanks for the reminder! I so need to get our paperwork organized. Like everything else, it is chaos!!!