When you start thinking about your money, the key place to start is organization. It’s essential that you organize your finances so that you can make informed decisions about the “next money steps”.
Over the years, I’ve tried everything possible to organize my money. I’m talking about keeping track of all my accounts, paper statement, insurance documents, bills, wills, old tax returns, business documents, and more. It seems like every year, the amount of “stuff” I need to keep grows and grows. As such, I’ve become a financial organization pro.
Today, I’m going to show you how I organize my financial life, and you can as well. I break it down into three sections:
- Keeping Your Financial Accounts Organized
- Tracking Your Live Documents (like bills)
- Organizing The Stuff You Have To Keep
Let’s get started.
Keeping Your Financial Accounts Organized
The first step in getting your financial life organized is simply listing out your financial accounts. There are three ways to go about this – the simple spreadsheet or list method, the software method, and the online method.
When you start, you need to think about budgeting for your personality. And this means using the tools (like technology or not) that best suite your personality.
But before you start, you just need to list out what you have. You should account for all of the following for accounts that hold monetary value. That is the key – these are the accounts that are worth money, not insurance or other financial “things”.
Banking
- Checking
- Savings
- Certificates of Deposit
- Money Market
Debt
- Credit Cards
- Auto Loan
- Mortgage
- Personal Loans
- Student Loans
This method takes more work than any of the other methods, and it’s hard to get real time data unless you’re going online and checking your accounts. Most people that use this method rely on paper statements and reconcile them when they arrive.
One of the best spreadsheets I’ve found is called My Financial Life on One Page (FLOP). It’s a free download, so check it out.