How To Organize Your Personal Finances
You can have serious layers of security when your finances are organized. Not only will you have mental peace of mind, but you can have monetary and physical security too. The benefits and needs of this are so tremendous that you should in fact start immediately. The advice in the following paragraphs are going to assist you in your organization efforts.
Make a list of any and all financial documents that might be relevant or important. It is best to actually accumulate everything you can here, down to receipts from the gas station for even small things like candy bars. Even with all of today's technology, there is no harm in just getting a binder and taping receipts down on pages you date with a marker. As long as you have any kind of record keeping system, you are organizing things.
Once you have gathered all your documents, bills and receipts, decide on how you are going to file them. A binder was mentioned in the previous paragraph, and this works well if you still get paper copies of everything. Going digital works today to, as you can get a scanner that can record everything.
Whether you go with analog paper storage or digital scanning and electronic records, make sure that your paperwork is safe from both getting damaged or stolen. Your identity and credit can get ruined if anyone gets their hand on all this information. Binders should be kept in fireproof boxes of some sort, preferably in a closet where a thief is unlikely to find them. Critical documents and thumb drive backups of your scanned documents should be in a fireproof safe that is also out of sight.
Block out a certain amount of time from your schedule either monthly or weekly to go through all your mail and bills and make updates to your files. You may remember your parents balancing their checkbooks at the end of the month back before everything went online. Do this yourself.
Let family and friends who might need to access your documents know how to do so if the situation arises. Never get so secure in your organization that your spouse or partner would be lost without you if you are not around one week and something happens. That is trouble for them and possibly a ruined relationship for you.
When you no longer need documents, due to irrelevance, age, duplication or because you scanned them, make sure you can get rid of them safely. Shredders are a good first step, but make sure the shredder crosscuts them into bits, not just strips. If you can, burn them to be sure. If not, scatter the debris across several trash receptacles to make nearly impossible for a determined person to tape it all back together.
Once you apply all that you have learned in this article to organize your financial picture, you need to keep in mind that this is not something you do only once. It needs to become a habit, for it is a fluid situation and continuing process. Take the importance and necessity of it to heart, and you are going to both be and feel safe and sound.
