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Organize your finances

Organize Your Finances!

How organized are your finances?

It’s important to be organized with your finances day-in and day-out because if you aren’t, you run the risk of overspending, losing bills, paying bills late, etc.   Being organized with your finances is an ongoing process.  

When my twins were young I became very unorganized with our finances.  I use to have a huge stack of unopened mail on my kitchen counter.  🙈  Being unorganized with our finances caused a tremendous amount of stress for me.    Before kids, I was organized and on top of everything in my life.  However, due to exhaustion and time constraints, I got to the point where I only opened the mail about once a month.  NOT RECOMMENDED!  I would sit down and enter transactions into our online checkbook register at the end of every month.  🙊  Then I would discover that we had overspent for the month.   We went through half of our savings because I simply didn’t know how much money we were spending.  I was very careful with my spending (only bought what we actually NEEDED), but I didn’t realize how much we were actually spending until it was too late.  I finally reached a breaking point and decided that I HAD to get organized.  I decided to start right where I was (no looking back and beating myself up) and move forward.

Here is how I got started organizing our finances:

💥I started opening my mail immediately.  Often I would open it in the car and trash what I didn’t need on the way into the house.

💥I had a folder for bills due this month and bills due next month.

💥When possible I paid the bills immediately or scheduled payment through my bank’s online bill payment service.  HIGHLY RECOMMEND!  (FYI:  I don’t recommend auto-draft for your bills.  I want you to have control over when the bills get paid!  Online bill payment bill through your bank gives you control over when bills get paid — more on that in another post!)

💥I entered the payment in my checkbook register and online budgeting app immediately.

💥I filed away the bill and never thought about it again.  I use a folder labeled for each month.  At the end of the year, I review the folders and purge anything that’s not needed.  I always keep anything that might be needed for tax purposes.

Results?

In the process of organizing my finances, I also got rid of a lot of mental clutter around budgeting and bill paying.  I use to dread sitting down and paying the bills.  Since I only opened the mail once a month it would take me 3-4 hours to work on our finances.  By using the above process I stopped dreading dealing with our finances and starting feeling so much less stressed.  I got hours of my time back, too!  That’s huge!  

What processes or systems do you use to stay on top of your finances?  Does being organized with your finances help you reach your goals?

 

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Hello! I'm Crystal!

I specialize in helping women, couples, and service-based small business owners who feel like they “make too much to be living paycheck to paycheck.” Together, we turn financial stress into financial clarity and create a plan for the life they’ve always imagined.

I’m based in Morristown, Tennessee, where I live with my husband and children. When I’m not coaching, I enjoy traveling, getting lost in a good book, and discovering new music.

Through Smart Money Financial Coaching, I’ve made it my mission to help people manage their money with confidence, pay off debt, and finally feel in control of their finances.

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