Product Description

Unclutter your pile of bills in a day!

Can you imagine your desk completely clear of stacks of bills and receipts? Would you like to know that your checking account balance is correct? Are you interested in avoiding $15, $25 and $35 late fees that are applied when you’re just one day late with payments?

Organize Your Personal Finances In No Time offers today’s time-crunched individuals easy, practical solutions to accomplish financial organization. Author Debbie Stanley, National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO) member and conference speaker, makes a career of managing chronically disorganized clients, leading them into organizational bliss. The book takes a project-based approach to breaking apart the steps needed to achieve order in your personal finances and teaches you multiple options to managing finances including online, electronic, and paper-based systems.

With quick, easy projects, you’ll discover many ways to manage your personal finances including:

How to set up a foolproof system for collecting receipts and ATM slips. How to set up a bill paying system and avoid late fees and overdrafts. Learning the "ruthless rules" for managing mail. Choosing your paper organization method - even going paperless. Shopping smart. Advanced number crunching techniques - measuring your net worth, P&L, savings and more. No time to figure it all out? Let Organize Your Personal Finances In No Time be your first step to getting it all together.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #463003 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 184 pages

From the Publisher
Unclutter your pile of bills in a day!

Can you imagine your desk completely clear of stacks of bills and receipts? Would you like to know that your checking account balance is correct? Are you interested in avoiding $15, $25 and $35 late fees that are applied when you’re just one day late with payments?

Organize Your Personal Finances In No Time offers today’s time-crunched individuals easy, practical solutions to accomplish financial organization. Author Debbie Stanley, National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO) member and conference speaker, makes a career of managing chronically disorganized clients, leading them into organizational bliss. The book takes a project-based approach to breaking apart the steps needed to achieve order in your personal finances and teaches you multiple options to managing finances including online, electronic, and paper-based systems.

With quick, easy projects, you’ll discover many ways to manage your personal finances including:

How to set up a foolproof system for collecting receipts and ATM slips.
How to set up a bill paying system and avoid late fees and overdrafts.
Learning the "ruthless rules" for managing mail.
Choosing your paper organization method - even going paperless.
Shopping smart.
Advanced number crunching techniques - measuring your net worth, P&L, savings and more.
No time to figure it all out? Let Organize Your Personal Finances In No Time be your first step to getting it all together.

About the Author
Debbie Stanley, owner of Red Letter Day in Detroit, Michigan, is a professional organizer and coach for chronically disorganized clients. With a B.A. in journalism and a master's degree in organizational psychology, Debbie has helped hundreds of ordinary people gain control of their lives and their clutter. She is a trainer and speaker for the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO) and support groups including Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. She is the chair of NAPO Publications Committee, president of NAPO's Michigan chapter, and a Certified Chronic Disorganization Specialist. She is also an editor and columnist for the magazine Balance.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Organize Your Personal Finances In No Time

Introduction

Remember Monopoly? I loved that game, and I was always the banker. I enjoyed stacking the money neatly in order by denomination, making sure the bills all faced the same way as they nestled in the little cardboard banker's drawer, and I kept the property cards in order according to their position on the board. (Yes, I was born to be an organizer.)

With an adult's perspective, it's interesting to recall my childhood approach to playing this game. I had a vague notion that you could borrow money, but I never did: In my Monopoly world, transactions were strictly cash-only. I didn't want to be bothered with keeping track of what I owed or gambling on whether I would have the payment in the future. I wanted to just hand the money over and be done with it, or, if I didn't have enough, to simply put the purchase out of my mind and roll the dice again.

As a grown-up I know that, no matter how much I wish it did, life doesn't work that way. Very few transactions happen in real time; almost everything, even a basic checking account, is based on credit, which adds layers of complexity to managing our money.

At the same time, credit has made life much more pleasant for millions of people, including me. Where would we live if we had to save up enough cash to buy a house without a mortgage? How safe could we possibly be if we had to carry around thousands of dollars in cash instead of one little card that's useless to a thief without the PIN? The credit system has been good to us, but it requires a heavy load of organization.

If you're like me, you see both the beauty and the impracticality of a simple cash system, and you sometimes resent the management that goes into the multiple bank accounts, credit cards, and investments of a typical family. Managing money is a necessary evil, not a hobby, so you want a system—a clear, concise, easy, and quick system—that allows you to track where your money is going, where it's coming from, and how much you actually have on any given day.

This has been a pet pursuit of mine since I got my first job back in high school, and over the years, I've tried a lot of things in my quest for the ideal financial management system. I've created highly detailed, complex, very accurate but very time- consuming processes, and I've tried the opposite extreme as well. With every new variation on my own methods, and with every system I've helped a client to develop for herself, I've learned something new about balancing the value of accuracy and detail with that of time and simplicity. I've learned the value of being "organized enough," and that's what I hope to convey to you with this book.

What Organize Your Personal Finances In No Time Can Do for You

The In No Time series was created for busy people who want to enhance areas of their lives that could use some organization. The title has two meanings: You want to get organized very quickly (seemingly in no time) and you need to accomplish this feat in the absence of spare time on your part (you have "no time" to organize). I know you don't want to make a career of this: You want to dive in, make improvements, and move on to the next project. So that's how you use this book—skim it, jump from chapter to chapter, take what you need, and go. You are, of course, welcome to read it cover to cover, savoring the author's wit and insight, but my feelings won't be hurt if you don't.

There are many fine books in print on general organizing and on managing your finances. This book bridges the gap between the two, showing you how to narrow the focus of foundational organizing techniques and direct them exclusively toward projects that clear the way for achievement of your financial goals.

Everything's easier when you're organized, and the best way to get there is one project at a time. You can organize the kitchen cabinets another day: For now, it's all about your money. Complete each of the projects in this book and you'll gain

• A foolproof system for collecting all of your receipts and ATM slips

• An income and expense tracking document and a technique for tracking cash expenditures on-the-fly

• The know-how to balance your checkbook by hand and information about options for setting up money management software

• A comprehensive bill-paying system that includes techniques for avoiding late fees and overdrafts

• An efficient method for managing incoming mail

• A comprehensive document storage and retrieval system, including paper and electronic files

• Techniques for creating a property inventory (both written and videotaped) and a plan for storing irreplaceable documents and computer media

• Tools to improve your efficiency as a consumer, including lists to prevent duplicate buying and a method for tracking items you've ordered

• Tools for calculating your net worth, debt-to-income ratio, and other personal statistics

• Resources for more information from experts on financial issues and advanced organizing

Along the way, you'll be able to see your finances from the perspective of a professional organizer, not a financial expert, so the focus stays on the efficiency of the system.

Who Should Read This Book?

If you believe that you could keep your finances organized with just a little direc-tion and better systems, you've come to the right place. This book is meant for readers who

• Have moderately complicated personal finances (multiple accounts, investments, credit cards, insurance policies, and the like)

• Have recently experienced an event that made their finances more complicated (such as marriage, starting a business, or receiving an inheritance)

• Are take-charge types who want to be in control of their finances and want to manage the process themselves

• Enjoy being organized and are willing to put forth the effort to achieve that state

• Have had their finances managed by someone else in the past but now want to take over the job themselves

• Want to put new systems in place but don't want to create them from scratch

• Have financial problems, such as chronic bounced-check fees, that can be improved by organization

• Are already doing a pretty good job of keeping their finances organized but would like to make refinements

For some people, this book will be a great start, but it won't be the only help you need. If you are intimidated by organizing or have had little success with past organizing efforts, you might find it most beneficial to work through this book with the guidance of a professional organizer—preferably one with experience in chronic disorganization. If you have financial problems that organizing will not alleviate, such as serious debt or compulsive shopping, or if you have high anxiety over financial matters that causes you to avoid addressing money matters, you can learn valuable organizing skills from this book, but you also need to work with a financial expert or a counselor with expertise in your areas of additional need.

How This Book Is Organized

The lessons and projects in this book are presented in a logical sequence, so you will have a more seamless experience if you work through the book from beginning to end. However, if you prefer you can use portions of the book in random order— especially if you're already organized in some of these areas and simply want to fill in the gaps in your system.

This book is organized into three parts; here's what each contains:

• In Part I, "Capture the Numbers," you'll learn how to track every dollar as it comes and goes and finally see an accurate picture of your income and spending habits. You'll develop systems for ensuring nothing slips through the cracks, which will pave the way for you to balance your accounts and keep them balanced from here on out. After you've gotten a grip on the seemingly secret life of your money, you'll establish a proactive approach to bill-paying and put safeguards in place to prevent late fees and overdrafts. By the end of this section, you will have a fully functional process for capturing the data of your every deposit, check, debit, and withdrawal.

• In Part II, "Corral the Paper," we set our sights on taming all of the statements, letters, bills, and other documents that enter your life (often uninvited). You'll establish some ruthless rules for managing the mail, and you'll find yourself throwing away much more than you have in the past. For the lucky papers that get to stay, you'll create a streamlined, easy-to-use filing system—or perhaps a legitimate "piling" system instead. You'll put special safeguards in place for your most critical documents, and you'll finally get those stacks of paper off your desk (or floor) and therefore off your mind!

• In Part III, "Advanced Projects," you get to have some fun. You'll learn some impressive organizing tricks that you can show off to your friends, all while taking your efficiency to new heights. Here you'll find organizing tools to get shopping down to a science and ways to make your planner (paper or electronic) work harder for you. Also in this section, if you want to tinker with the financial numbers you now have at your fingertips, you'll find formulas for calculating your net worth, your debt-to-income ratio, and even your own personal profit-and-loss statement. If you want to create a savings or debt repayment plan, you can do it with the tools in this sect...

Customer Reviews

This is a helpful and organized resource...about organizing!
If you've ever felt like you were the only person in the world who is afraid to go near that giant pile of bills, receipts and other financial paperwork, this book can help you. Of course, even if you already have a plan in place, you might find this book helpful too. I thought I had a pretty good system, but a friend recommended that I give this book a look-see and I have to say I am pleasantly surprised.

Have you ever seen that show on TV where the organizer comes in and takes everything out of the room? He teaches the person how to examine and organize their stuff, then shows them their newly-organized space, all ready for them to maintain on their own. A place for everything, and everything in its place, as the old saying goes. Well, this book is exactly like that. It shakes up your thinking and helps you realize what you could be doing better and easier.

Even if you have files and never lose a receipt, it's not always easy to see where your money goes every month. This book covers, from beginning to end, all aspects of the process and does it in plain language and in a friendly way. It doesn't take long to read and is easy to flip through for guidance on different topics. I would definitely recommend this book for anyone who shops, saves, counts...well, you understand. I'm a convert and this book is a real helper.

Practical and to the Point
If you need to simplify how you handle your finances and paperwork, this is
the book for you.

Even if you are organized in this area, this book will motivate you to
simplify even more. It did for me.

As a Professional Organizer, one of the biggest downfalls I see to any money
management system is making it overcomplicated--e.g., waiting to organize
your finances because first you need to learn the computer program you plan
to use.

Next, is the indecision most people face when they are trying to get
organized. This is commonly seen in how to name files and how to store files
(covered simply in the book!).

Stanley provides practical, to the point direction in how to decide what is
just right for you, so that your systems will actually support you and not
work against you by being overcomplicated.

This book takes you through the decision making processes involved in
setting up the systems you'll need.

This is the first book on organizing finances that I have seen that is as
interested in you the person, as a seasoned Professional Organizer would be.

She makes it so easy to decide what you need to do next, based on you. It
was as close to having a live Professional Organizer there with me while I
was reading.

Be sure to check out the cool icons that guide you to quick tips and hints,
such as "Clever Client" and "Organized Enough" (hooray that an organizing
book is finally addressing the concept of not over-organizing).

Finally, an easy to follow book to organize your finanaces!
This book is great! I would have never guessed that a book on organizing finances would be fun to read, but this one is! It is easy to follow and is presented in a way that makes it quite simple to customize your own systems. In addition to all the wonderful financial advice (some which I did not even realize that I needed to know!), there is plenty of advice on organizing other area's of your life. For example, dealing with non-financial paper and clutter like magazine articles and catalogs. My favorite is the "room-by-room" files. They work awesome!
Every young person or couple just starting out should have this book! I'll be giving it for bridal shower gifts from now on!