The first couple wks at home & finances

kiwi625

How did you handle bill paying/household finances during the first part of recovery/being at home with newborn multiples? We're first time parents so we'll be learning everything about being parents on top of getting to know our twins. 

With trying to BF, pump, and all that the early weeks entail, I'm worried I won't have time or I will forget to balance the checkbook and pay bills. (I'm the one who handles our finances.)

Or is it really not that bad/hard to take care of things like that? 

chickaboo1974

Do you bank online?  We do and have everything just automatically set to pay.  That being said, I think you can find time in there atleast once a week to look at your bills.

turtle_1278

I agree with setting everything to pay ahead.  As with everything else lately if I don't write it down/set it up in advance, I forget.  If we could, we tried to change the pay date to pay it all around the same time, that way we do them at one time.

kiwi443

I also pay most of the bills. During the last stages of pregnancy, I set up as much as I could for online bill paying. It made it easier for me to do when I had a spare minute.

naflmj

DH actually does most of the bill paying but it's all online so we don't forget. We set it up through our bank account.

thiswillbe

It's good you're thinking about it in advance. I didn't, and missed some irregular bills. Regular stuff wasn't too much of a problem, and we did/do pretty much all of our banking online, but we didn't have a system set up for random bills (hospital stuff that wasn't part of our big initial bill, specialist bills when the kids were sick, etc.).

megs_glo

I pay the bills and I worked it out.  Basically any bill that came after they were born I just paid as soon as I got it.  (This was not the best idea because I ended up over paying and I had to do some work to get reimbursed).  But it just helped to get them paid.

Kelli&Jed

If you can set up any sort of automatic bill pay I would highly recommend it.  It's just one less thing to worry about.  Our boys are 1 1/2 and I still can't remember to pay the bills on time! 

krismott25

We do 75% of our bills via auto-withdrawl. It helps dh get's paid 1st and 15th vs everyother week. I also have a spreadsheet I use for them so I can highlight them when they go through so I don't loose track. It takes me all of an hour twice a month to figure it all out. Hopefully it will stay that simple once the babies come.

kiwi625

Well I'm glad to see I'm not being ridiculously obsessive by thinking about this. I think I need to spend some quality time with our online banking website soon.   

ninjabridemom

Bills got paid.  Our rent was a couple days late b/c we were in the hospital on the 1st (and hadn't planned on it) but it was w/in the grace period and the managers understood.  Other than that, we just...paid them.  I could do online stuff while nursing, even if at that point I had to relatch a babe a few times.

 

Really this is one of those things that may seem like a big deal at the time but you just deal with when you need to.  Like groceries, laundry, etc.  It doesn't always get done how you used to do it but these things get done.  Help helps, of course, and please take all you can get!, but they still....get done. 

LadyNikon

I use google calendars for everything. I add myself and hubby to the event and it goes off on every device we own.  

redhotchili83

I got our bank's app for my phone.  It helped a TON.  Its a lot easier to hop on your phone when you randomly are wondering if you paid the water bill than it is to find a computer or your checkbook.  I do pretty much everythign on my phone now.