Dinna fash yersel’!
January 3, 2010
(Don’t worry yourself!)
It’s that time again for some year’s end/year’s dawn clearing out.
In an effort to keep my nomadic lifestyle from derailing my money lifestyle, I had to take a day to clean up and keep up after the past two weeks of running about.
Paying Bills
— Yodlee insists on mucking about with improvements that don’t help functionality like adding the option to mark a bill “Skipped.” Real responsible, Yodlee, encouraging skipped payments.
— Remember that it doesn’t really matter when the money goes out. Interest rates are negligible, late fees are not. I used to pay bills for a 7-day period, but I’m changing to a 14-day period since my focus sitting in front of the computer isn’t on mundane stuff like paying bills.
Health
— Once a month, I’ll do a meds check to make sure that I’ve always got enough on hand.
Financial Records
— Two more Citi cards were canceled due to inactivity. They weren’t my top tier rewards cards so it doesn’t matter to me. I just removed them from the online interface. The credit cards will be scanned for my credit report records check (I’ve had a lot of cards, and it’s easy to forget which ones I had. Should probably Excel spreadsheet this too.)
— Doublechecked to make sure an erroneous subscription to Credit Protector was for the canceled card. That saves me a follow-up phone call.
— I had three sets of promotional credit card offers: The Chase Sapphire reqs have been fulfilled and I’ve gotten my reward ($100); Citi FWD reqs were just fulfilled recently so I’ll be claiming those Thank You points at the end of the next statement (11k points); and the AMEX reqs were also recently fulfilled. All three cards have been removed from my wallet to prevent further confusion.
Examine new offers
— Citi FWD: Cell Phone Protection; pay your monthly cell phone bill with your Citi Forward card & receive:
• Automatic cell phone protection from damage or theft
• Coverage on phones and PDA
• Up to $250 per eligible claim (with a $50 co-pay)
This might be worth switching over my autobilling. Maybe.
Housekeeping
— 3 loads of laundry, lest the temptation to chuck it all and buy all new overwhelms and send me screaming to the mall. Not very likely, but you can’t take chances.
— Vacuuming
