By Jan Lindsey

Assuming you make enough money to cover your expenses, you probably have got the monthly bills down to a science.  The invoices come in, the payments go out.  Done and done.

But if you’re like most people, you still trip over the intermittent bills – things such as car insurance payments, vet bills and holiday presents that at most come due a couple of times a year and always seem to strain the budget.  I found a solution to this a couple of years ago.

The problem wasn’t income -- I made enough money to pay my bills. The problem was cash flow – it wasn’t always there when I needed it.  Sometimes, that sent me reaching for the credit cards.  Never good.  So here’s what I did.  I made a list of everything that I pay that is not a routine monthly expense.  For me, it was:

Christmas and birthday gifts, including any estimated shipping costs

Vacation expenses, including boarding costs for the dog

Annual veterinarian checkups and shots for the pets, plus 50 percent for emergencies

Dog grooming expenses

Pet medication expenses

Car insurance

Wholesale grocery club annual dues

Driver’s license and car tag renewals

Birthday, anniversary and holiday meals ($100 set aside for each date to cover additional groceries

    or a lion’s share of any restaurant bill)

I totaled it up and divided by 12 to get a price per month over the course of a year. Then I began putting that amount into a special, separate savings account each month. This is sacred money. It can’t be used for anything other than a bill on the list.  When the car insurance comes due, I just pull the amount I need from the special account and pay what I owe. No muss, no fuss.

Handling your money like this is a lot like playing the bagpipes: the notes don’t come out at the same rate the air goes in, but the notes always emerge and you never run out of air.  I redo the list every year to make sure nothing has changed. (If the dog dies, I’ll cry, but I will longer need money for grooming and boarding, for example.)

Your list of expenses may be different, and you should take your time drafting it. It may be helpful to go back a year in your check register or take a look at old credit card statements to find these expenses and see how much each item costs. Round up or down to allow for any expected changes. 

In my case, the list totaled about $8,000 a year. That meant a monthly payment of more than $650 a month. My first reaction was that that was an awful lot of money to take out of circulation every month.  But then I thought. If I couldn’t set aside $650 a month, how was I going to pay car insurance in the same month I was going on vacation? All of a sudden putting cash into an account each month seemed like the lesser of two evils. It soaked up some spending money and some slush money -- but it eliminated the panic.