The Best 5 Tips for Managing Your Personal Finances
Managing your personal finances may never become one of life’s pleasures
Managing your personal finances may never become one of life’s pleasures, but it certainly doesn’t have to feel like being tied down in the dentist chair. Most people are only a few steps away from being able to turn chaos into order and a dreaded, time-consuming chore into brief and positive experience each month. All it takes is some organization, a little bit of technology and a new attitude.
Wall off your finances: Literally. Physically separate all aspects of your financial life from the rest of your life. If you don’t have a separate office, you need to carve out a physical space where you can place a small desk and file cabinet that contains nothing but your personal financial materials.
De-clutter: Take all of your billers up on the offer to go paperless. You will receive an email notification when one is ready to view through your online account.
Go digital: It’s quickly getting to the point when you run out of excuses for not converting to a personal finance software program for doing your basic budgeting book keeping. Sure there is a learning curve but the ultimate time savings will be huge.
Scan your documents: Take your digital conversion up a notch by scanning all of your receipts, bills and statements. For $5, JotNot is a Smartphone app that allows you to take pictures of all of your documents which you can be stored in folders or sent to yourself as an email.
Use a credit card: A credit card can be better for spending control and cash flow management. By using a credit card to pay your regular monthly expenses you will have a real-time record of your transactions that can be viewed online at anytime. Plus, if your account is linked to your online personal financial management program, the transactions can be automatically imported for easy cash flow management. It goes without saying that the credit card balance must be paid in full each month.
Bonus: Use a credit card with a generous cash back rewards program to increase your cash flow each month.