Do you ever get caught out with a bounced payment?

Every now and then I get caught out by a direct debit bouncing and it is a good reminder of how I need to continuously check my account balances, and make sure there is enough for the payments to go through.

So I wondered, apart from scrolling back through the internet banking transactions all the time, how could I keep track of these payments?

Add them to my calendar

I use a number of calendars for work and home.  It's the home finances that often get forgotten, because I am so busy at work. We have a shared apple calendar for the family, so I can set them up in there so that I can see the amounts when I look at my phone.  This way, I can set them up as recurring calendar events, and it can be obvious if the amount changes, or if we want to cancel one, it is a reminder every month.  

I have used green as the colour as it is the colour that best represents money.

Create a manual calendar

I am a fan of visual reminders on the fridge.  Back when we still got paper bills (rather than emailed) I would pop all the upcoming bills on the fridge with a magnet.  Most of our bills are now emailed and direct debited - meaning it's not up to me to pay the bills (yay for simplicity)!  But, sometimes I overspend.  And that means bounced payments.

A very visual option is to draw up a manual calendar picture for my fridge, showing all the dates of when and the amount for each payment.

Map out a list of what's coming in and out

Map out a listing of when the money goes into the account on pay day, and the total outgoing before the next pay day.  This is a great method to work out what your average deposit needs to be if you are using a standalone bank account just for direct debits.  You might do it on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis, depending on when you get paid.

It might look something like this:

+In.      - Out.      = Balance

+165.   - 65         = 100

+165.   - 126       = 139

+165    - 220.      = 84

+165.   - 200.      = 49

+165.   - 65.        = 149

+165.   - 126.      = 188

This calculates that the minimum account balance for this account is $49, creating a comfortable buffer in case of changes to the costs.

What do you do to avoid the dreaded bounced payments?

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