How to Get Your Personal Finances Organized

Edited by ehijoshua

There are many ways in which you can establish a healthy financial status in your personal life. However, a major ingredient that is needed when attempting to organize your finances is self-discipline. No method will work if you are not consistent or if you cannot control your spending. If you are serious and looking for ways to get your personal finances organized, then consider the following steps.

Steps

1
Create an organized filing system that breaks your finances in to various categories, including bills, insurances, pay stubs, and receipts. Try to keep everything in date order so they can be found easily.
2
Clean up your bank and credit accounts if you are serious about organizing your personal finances. You should not have any inactive accounts open as they just clutter your financial portfolio and could impact your credit negatively.
3
Limit the number of bank accounts you have to a minimum that allows you to bank according to your personal needs. Some people may need just one account whereas others may prefer to break their finances into savings, spending, and emergency funds. Credit cards should be limited also, and ideally, these cards should never hold a balance.
4
Take control of finances and spending by establishing a budget. Make a list for grocery shopping and stick to it. Keep all your receipts and make note of your expenses. If you are comfortable carrying a credit card and you are disciplined about paying it off once a month, then put all your purchases on this one credit card so you can see what you are incurring. Just make sure that you don't purchase beyond your budget. Your budget should determine your expenses--not the credit card limit.
5
Organize a location for filing unpaid bills and allocate a bill paying day. Confirm when payment is due and mark that in a daily planner specifically for bill paying.
6
Allow technology to assist you in your endeavor to organize your finances. Set up automated payments for your regularly scheduled bills so you are never late paying them. You can do the same for depositing savings on a regular basis by having funds withdrawn from one account into your savings account or retirement fund. With automated payments, you will most likely receive e-mail reminders, so make sure to document these dates in your planner, make sure you have enough funds in your account, and then file the email in a folder allocated for that specific bill.
7
Make note of all your usernames and passwords in a safe place. You want to be able to access this information on bill paying day, so make sure that the information is readily available.
8
Invest in a shredder so that you can destroy unneeded financial documents with confidential information. You should also make a point of shredding credit card offers.