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Best Ways to Organize Bills?
scorp1us asks: "Every year on the 1st of January, I start a new set of folders for storing my bills. Generally, I keep everything divided up by account. But this seems to take too long. I wait 3-6 months and get a big pile nad have to go about sorting it. I have been considering a per-month scheme - all bills go to one folder, each month. With all the CS people out there studying sorting algorithms, has anyone found a better approach?"
Always put your bills in order as you put them into your folders.
There's not really much need, is there? When a new bill comes in, you can put it on the stack of bills that need to be paid. When the bill is paid, you can shove it in a big box, right on the top.
This procedure has a couple benefits. It's simple, taking no time or thought to implement. Plus, the big box implements a stack. If some bill needs to be discovered for some reason (a rare event) you will discover that the stack is mostly sorted in chronological order with the newest bills on the top.
When solving any problem, it's important to ask yourself what level of implementation effort is necessary. There's only one reason to go into the box of past bills: to find an old bill. A manual search through the pile won't be appreciably speeded when the pile is fully sorted by date and category, so why go through that effort? Just as good is the nearly cost free implementation of a *nearly* sorted stack of bills.
Of course, I am making the assumption that you are sorting bills to solve some sort of real-world bill-paying problem, and not a problem that a particular personal compulsion for neatness might raise (i.e. neatness/categorization obsession).
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
Just curious, do you ever come back to them? I started to be that organized, then I realized they never come back out, so I stuff them all into a big envelope at the end of the year. In recent months, I have most of my bills come to my email account instead.
I guess what I'm saying is "I need more info" before I can suggest a method that is helpful to you. One major ingredient to how you sort is how you intend to retrieve it. I'm reasonably certain that anybody who's ever written a search algorithm will give you a similar answer.
"Derp de derp."
What are your access patterns? Is this data just stored away and rarely, if ever, referenced again? Or do you frequently need to find it? Sorting, indexing and searching all require effort, but you can trade off sorting and indexing effort against search effort.
Also, you don't necessarily have to have a single solution for all data elements. Stuff that is likely to be needed frequently and/or soon can be cached in fast-access storage, stuff that may be needed can be placed in slower storage, stuff that almost certainly won't be needed can be placed in archival storage and stuff that definitely won't be needed can be discarded.
FWIW, here's my solution: I use a computer (and Quicken, though there are many workable alternatives -- that's just the one I started using 15 years ago) to provide quick access to all of my financial information. 99% of the time, all I need to know is who, what, when and how much, and the computer provides all of that. Additionally, there's plenty of incentive to keep it up to date, since doing so helps me answer the rather important question "Do I have any money?". It's also pretty easy, given I can download and automatically import bank and credit card statements.
For managing the paper, I use a multi-level storage approach. I have a "to hold" file that is my fast-retrieval cache, for things that I know I'll need soon. I keep two files and a box for each year. One file is "tax-related stuff", the other is "warranty-related stuff" and the box gets everything else, in a random, completely disorganized jumble. Retrieval of stuff in the box is slow, but since it's basically LIFO-structured, more recent stuff is easy to find, which fits common access needs, and I really don't get in there very often anyway. Any need to reach into the box represents a cache miss, and I try to adapt my caching algorithms to minimize those (without overloading the cache, of course).
I keep the last four years' tax and warranty files in the filing cabinet. At the end of each tax season, the previous year's box moves to archive storage in the basement. When a given years' tax and warranty files move out of the filing cabinet, they go in their corresponding box in the archive. Every few years I go through the boxes, and any that are more than 10 years old (7 is really adequate) get shredded.
The computer-based data, however, is permanent. I put backups in a safety deposit box. I expect it will frighten me in 30 years to see just how much money I've made and spent in my lifetime.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Well, I was a first-time, new-construction home buyer 2 years ago, and all my financier asked for was a pay stub. Perhaps these comments of yours aren't hard-and-fast rules, or perhaps my lender didn't feel the need for that level of due diligence (plausible, given that the mortgagor was the parent company of the builder.)
They verbally inquired about the source of my down payment, but just they took my word for it.
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