Financial Organization Tips

The following is my answer to someone who asked for advice about organizing their finances:

As far as finances go, my biggest piece of advice is to track your spending for at least a few months so you can create an accurate spending plan (also known as a budget). I personally use an excel spreadsheet that I made the first year I was married that covers EVERYTHING we spend from presents to vacations to monthly expenses and investments. There are also many other programs out there like that. I tracked our income and everything we spend, then made a spending plan based on that. We make sure we pay savings, 401(k) and bills first and have it automatically taken out. I'm an advocate of e-bills--it's quick and helps make sure bills are paid on time and it makes saving easier when it's automatically taken out, eliminates paper clutter, not to mention the trees you're saving. I keep this spreadsheet on my Palm Pilot and write down everything we spend in it. It automatically calculates and adds everything up for me. My husband and I sit down every few months and look at the averages of what we spent the last few months and see how well we're keeping within our spending limits we've imposed on ourselves. If we're spending over in a certain area we make the necessary changes. Sometimes we decide to be more disciplined and buckle down, and sometimes we decide we want to allot more money to a certain category, which means we have to take it from somewhere else. When it's reduced to an equation, it makes being disciplined a little easier because you can't argue with numbers. You earn what you earn and the spending simply needs to be less than the income. I've written an essay on this very topic (see my prior Choices post) about my own experience and struggle with facing the cold hard truth when my husband started making less money when he went back to school. But then I realized that ignoring the truth (numbers) was only denial and not helping anything. It all comes down to choices and we can choose to be disciplined and experience the freedom and peace that accompanies. This applies to everything in life, and it's completely up to us!!! If we say no when needed and sacrifice a little upfront we get to say yes to so many more things in the future!

Organized Garage! Check out my mad skills!

I was excited about the results of the new and improved garage I organized last week, so I thought I would share the before and after pictures. We got rid of a lot of it (I love to declutter!) and used the Rubbermaid Fasttrack system, which I am very pleased with. Amazon had the best prices for most of it and the rest of the hooks were purchased at Walmart as needed.