Keeping your financial life in order is one way to get yourself on the pathway to being wealthy. When you have a pile of bills and paper work cluttering up your office, it is likely that you don’t know what is coming in and going out. You have relinquished control when you are in that state. If you have one huge plastic bin that you throw all your mail in you’ll want to update your system.
If someone needed your tax returns for the past year, could you locate them easily? If you needed your social security card, birth certificate or will, would you know where they are?
Have you left instructions for your family members to retrieve important financial information in case you passed away? Do they know where your life insurance policies, bank accounts or your property deeds are located? Dealing with the death of a loved one is difficult enough without putting the burden of locating your important information on the shoulders of your children, relatives or friends.
Create a filing system that will be easy for you to use and tell your family where you’ve put your important papers. A filing system is important for keeping tabs on your investments, your tax returns, your will, your insurance information and other legal documents. Is your system going to help you locate the important papers when they are needed? Most people understand how helpful a filing system is once they have it working for them.
What do you do with your mail? There are so many advertisements and junk mail that accumulate. It’s best to deal with this trash on a daily basis. If you have mail that you want to get rid of, be sure to use a shredding machine. Important information can be on unwanted mail. There are people who make a point of rummaging through trash to get this information and that can put you in serious risk for identity fraud. You don’t want that to happen to you.
What about bills that come in? Where do you put them before you pay them? With the online banking services available you can simply take the bill and set up a scheduled payment for it that will be sent out when you choose it to be sent. Then destroy the bill if you don’t need it for any record keeping. If you can keep up with the mail and bills coming in with a system that is orderly, you’ll avoid a lot of late payment fees and be able to use the money you earn more effectively.
No plan is going to work for you if you don’t actually do it and with money matters, some people just hate dealing with organizing this information. Even looking at a credit card bill can feel devastating. If you’ve had spending sprees that you regret, you won’t even want to open your credit card bills.
It may be difficult for you to imagine what is going to get you back in control of your financial life. The most important thing to do is to have the courage to create a good system that works for you. Get rid of the large bin that you toss your mail into and forget about for weeks on end. Get back on the pathway to wealth by creating a system that works for you. You’ve done much harder things in the past. Organizing your finances is one way to treat yourself well and gain back a feeling of peace in your life.
