Nine Ways I Use Google Calendar to Keep My Money Straight [The Simple Dollar]

As an avid Google maniac, I love Google Calendar. In fact, of all the things that Google does, I think Calendar is probably the single best application it came up with. With Google Calendar, you can set up multiple sub-calendars (mine: personal stuff, work appointments, blog topics, bills, Brewers schedule) and choose if you want to view them all at once on one calendar, or click around to just see the ones you are looking for. You can set up both email reminders or text message reminders, and you can share calendars (my girlfriend and I share our personal calendars with each other, so we know how to make plans). Best of all: it's free.

So I was incredibly pleased to see the above blog post in my RSS subscriber this morning from The Simple Dollar. My favorite tip is one I already use:

1. Keep track of bill due dates
This is perhaps the most obvious use of using a calendar for personal finance. When you know a bill’s due date, add it to your calendar, then pay the bill when you see it’s coming close to its due date. So, for example, our mortgage payment is due on the 28th of each month, so on my calendar, on the 28th of each month, there’s a note that our mortgage payment is due. It helps me keep track of our payments.

How can I do this? It’s simple. Log onto Google Calendar. First, I recommend creating a new calendar specifically for bill due dates if you haven’t already - this makes it easy to highlight them. Then, click on the day the bill is due, create a new event, and add the appropriate information - the amount and the type of bill, at the very least. If this bill recurs on a regular basis, make the bill a repeating event. You might also want to add an event reminder so you’re emailed a few days in advance of the bill due date.

Free from Broke offers a nice visual guide to adding a bill due date to your calendar.

Some tips can be used with any calendar application (or even a paper calendar *gasp*!), but they work incredibly well with Google Calendar. Check it out!