The old way-paying bills by sitting down with a checkbook and some address labels and writing the checks, licking the envelopes, and putting on a stamp.

My new way-Using my debit card, then forgetting that the payment needs to clear, and having our checking account bounce.

I don’t know, I am so frustrated by the whole bill-paying situation that I hardly know what to do. It is supposed to be my job to pay our bills, and I have tried all kinds of different methods-the envelope method, setting up automatic payments, keeping track of payments in notebooks, on spreadsheets, you name it, I try it. And yet, I still can’t seem to get a system that works. I’m seriously thinking about going back to old-fashioned writing checks, instead of using my debit card to have the payments deducted. Maybe if I had the check carbons to look at, it would be easier to keep track of how much of the money in the checking account is actually available to spend. I remember thinking debit cards were going to be so awesome, but now I think they just make bill-paying more complicated.

VistaPrint has cheap address labels, like 140 of them for $7.99. Maybe going back to the old ways isn’t such a bad idea after all.