How to Organize Your Finances

Reader-Submitted Tips for Organizing Your Money

• If you can fit all of your stuff in a big binder, great, do it.

  If you need a small hanging-file box to hold it all, that’s fine too.

  My point is, just make sure you keep everything in one place. There’s nothing worse than having stuff spread out everywhere from your car to your office when tax time rolls around and you’re franticly searching for that single slip of paper that you need.

• To keep track of car maintenance, gas, and expensable things while on the road, use a cheapo mini-day planner with tabs. Throw it in your glove compartment and use it to record stuff as well as to store receipts.
• Find a small pen that you can fit into your wallet (they’re available online) and keep that, along with a scrap slip of paper with you to record your spending.

  These little pens have saved me – if it requires extra the extra effort of remembering to bring something like a bulky PDA or pad, I’ll usually just leave them at home, but this tiny little pen works wonders.

• It’s easy to keep 2 or more years worth of old bill stubs filed away ‘just in case’. Get rid of them. They just take up extra space and you’ll never need to come back to them after a year or so.