Financial Binders where to begin and how to start??? I was SOOOO overwhelmed by our bills and getting in a groove!! I am only two weeks into having set mine up but it has made a world of difference!! We have 4 bills that are bi monthly! All four are utilities and can be a doozy if I forget!! I am a little bit of a spread sheet freak! (Okay a big one) but I delete as the bills are paid on the check book register and then…opps short a bill! I did a lot of research (yes that’s what I will call the HOURS I disappeared on Pinterest ) and decided how I wanted to do it. And what better time to start fresh then the New Year!!!
Each bill/company has a category to have papers filed behind, a place to track our income and keep pay stubs, tax papers to hold onto, and big purchase receipts to be filed as well.
Most our bills are do the same dates every month. Expect those bi months so it’s helpful to write how much is owed when the bills com in!! As the bills come in they get three holed punched and put in that pink folder pictured above along with statements that need to be filled and printed off receipts (from e-paying) then I spend time once a week filing them. I pull out the binder and do bills SO MUCH faster now. Before I would spend so much time digging for pieces of paper and losing the bill stub it wasn’t even funny!
As well as tracking when the bills are due I am tracking the amount we pay each month. I left open spaces (already realized I had forgotten newspaper subscription, weight watchers, Ooma for our home phone). I will carry over these two papers to our 2014 (after I update them on the computer) so I can see what our utilities were like in the cold/hot season for better budgeting. This year I am digging through statements to find out. Not all our bills are online for us to see sadly
Tracking my debt 🙁 We are following Dave Ramsey’s plan to pay down our student loans and mortgage I was shocked to see on a $2,000 student loan statement they expected pay off date wasn’t till 2018!!!! Man if I could go back in time, but we are paying down hard and fast now!!! I put Other in case something else happens (we have used a credit card once in 3 years and carried a balance I cried we have upped our emergency fund to $2,000 so hopefully it never happens again but it was one bad thing after another all the more motive to pay off the student loans FAST!!) We paid off close to $10,000 in debt last year and paid cash for a ton of stuff at our house!!
Do you have a financial binder? I would love to hear what is in yours that is not in mine! I made most my spreadsheets using excel and it was so easy and customized to my needs!
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