Organizing Finances

With the economy the way it is, we are all watching our finances closely. Here's a few ideas we use around our house...

Bills:
We get my husband's paycheck twice a month. This makes it easy to break bills down to 2 bill days a month. I budget EVERYTHING on paper BEFORE his paycheck even comes in. I started out by breaking down when all of our bills were due and split them between the two checks as evenly as possible. This makes it easy for bill day to know exactly which bills are getting paid that time. Don't forget to budget in spending/fun money for you. Pay yourself first and put money into savings first too. This sounds hard when you are living paycheck to paycheck, but if you start doing this, you will start accumalating money in savings and after a few months, you will be surprised that you are not living paycheck to paycheck any more!

I'm also an excel spreadsheet addict and have created spreadsheets for everything! I have one to keep track of our bills and one to keep track of our spending. Excel is an easy program to learn and you can even set it up to do all the math for you!!! On our spending spreadsheets (I have one for personal checking and one for my website businesses), I enter in reciepts when I spend something and color code them for either supplies, fun spending, homegoods, kids and so on. This way at the end of the month, I can look and see which color has the most and I can tell if I've gone a little crazy in the fun money dept or if I've been good!

The point is that you NEED to pay attention to your finances. Don't take the "what I don't know won't hurt me" attitude, because it will!!! Be prepared and plan ahead. If you have a plan you will be in control of where your money goes and it won't be as scary when emergencies come up! Get $1000 in an emergency fund as soon as possible. You never know when one may come up. Plan your paycheck/bills and spending. Don't be afraid to pay yourself first! You work hard for that money and deserve it! When you have a spending plan, you don't need to feel guilty when you buy something special for yourself! Oh, and get those credit cards paid off and cut up as quickly as possible too! We have NO CREDIT CARDS!!! We don't use them. We don't get in over our heads with them. We pay CASH (or write a check) for EVERYTHING! With an emergency fund, we don't need them! How would you feel if you had no credit card bill? Pretty good, huh?

I have more tips on budgeting in my ebook, "12 Weeks to an Organized Home"! To purchase the instant download and get started today, please click the buy now button over on the right!