Mad at Myself

I am really mad at myself!

The past week I have ended up paying almost $50 in penalties and late fees on a credit card and a utility bill, not to mention calls from my cable company about a missed payment.

I have no valid excuse.

I was not travelling nor unduly busy.

How I missed all these bills and let them languish is what I am annoyed about. Paying $$ for late fees that could have been avoided is like throwing good money away and it rubs me the wrong way.

I do think my new mail organization system is to blame. Normally I would get the mail, pull out the bills and leave the junk mail in the laundry room and every couple of days go through the bills and pay them.

But the volume of junk mail is unbelievable. It looks like every animal and nature charity in the world has found me.

So recently I decided that the mail has to be put into a cute red bag that I hang by the door so its not cluttering up the laundry room. That way its out of sight.

But apparently its it of mind as well :-(

I have been grabbing mail seeing there are bills, shoving it into the bag, and thinking I will get to it tonight/tomorrow.

Big mistake!

Well, and so time passes, I linger doing non-productive stuff like surfing and watching movies.....while the mail sits there hidden in my red bag.

So after remonstrations to myself the past few days, and thoughts of how I could have spent that $50 ...I am instituting a new mail policy, which is actually my old mail policy.

Bills will be pulled out each day from the general mail and put on the kitchen counter in plain view and paid within a day or so of receiving them.  That is how I did it before and I never missed any.

Now in case you are thinking why does she not do auto pay. Yes, I will be going down that path for a few things (like cable) where the bill is the same each month. Other things like credit card and utilities I like to check my statements before I pay.  Most payments are online anyways so its very quick, but I do think I need to begin relying on auto-pay more.

In other stuff, I need to disclose my pregnancy to my neighbour soon. My belly is getting quite obvious now if I am not wearing a jacket.  I usually put one on before going to get the mail or drag the garbage can. For walks, my sweatshirt coveres up fairly well.   I usually do a small gift exchange with some of the neighbours around Christmas, so that will be a good time to tell them.

Earlier this week I ran into a colleague of my Mom's at a memorial service of a neighbour. I exchanged some pleasantries with her and when I mentioned it to my Mom she asked me jokingly "so did she see your big belly?". I said no since I was wearing a business suit and the jacket covered it up well.

 My Mom will tell her colleagues around the holidays too. Given how very reluctant I am to disclose it to anyone (wish I could live in a cave until the baby arrives for fear of jinxing it), I feel badly for Duchess of Cambridge being forced to announce her pregnancy so early on due to her hospitalization. That must really be terrible to have the whole world know so soon!

Its really warm here...most un-Christmas like. I hope it cools down, 72 degrees in Dec seems odd!

And thanks a lot for your baby furniture tips on my last post. Very helpful indeed!!!