How many bills do you get each month? If you've ever had a difficult time organizing your bills, you probably know how frustrating it can be to keep up with the payments. While some people can keep track of monthly expenses in their head, others (like myself) need a more visual tool to help them keep track of those recurring expenses. Sure, you can add a reminder in your calendar and set it to remind you when each bill is due. I've done that too, but there's an easier way!
A relatively new service called Manilla.com is available for people who want to track their bills in one place. Think of it as Mint.com, but for managing your recurring bills. With Manilla, you have a central account that lets you sync to your monthly service providers like AT&T, credit cards, cable and internet provider, utilities, and over 1,300 other vendors.
How Manilla Works
If you have about 5 minutes, you can set up your account for free. The nice part is that Manilla doesn't require any more than your name, zip code, and a password. You don't have to give away all your information to yet another site.
As soon as your profile is created, you can start to add your accounts to Manilla. All your services are listed on one page, so it makes it really easy to glance over your entire month's bills. Even better, they're sorted into categories, so you can keep organized by listing bills under household, finance, automobile, utilities, and other convenient categories.
Store Your Statements in One Place
One of the most helpful aspects of Manilla.com is the option for you to store your statements online forever. While most service providers only give you access to your statements for a few months, Manilla.com stores your entire history of statements and allows you to access them at any time. The days of logging into multiple accounts to find your monthly statement is long gone.
Set Reminders and Pay Your Bills
For all you visual learners out there, this part will grab your attention. Manilla automatically adds your bills to a calendar, allowing you to see exactly when everything is due and how much it is. Even more, Manilla acts like your own personal assistant when it comes to reminding you about bills that are due. You can set reminders to alert you when a bill is coming due and get notified through email or text. You can set them for up to 7 days in advance, which gives enough time for your manual payment to go through if you're not already set up with auto-pay through the service provider.
If you are still making manual payments each month for certain service providers, you can use Manilla as your one-stop-shop for bill pay. In your profile, you'll have the option to make a payment. If you use AT&T, for example, you'll be able to click on 'make a payment' and it'll direct you to the payment-processing page.
I've been using Manilla for a few months and have really found it to be helpful. If you've been looking for a better way to manage your bills, I'd encourage you to look at Manilla.com.
This has been a guest post by Tim from Kirksville, MO
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