Welcome to Week 6 of our Organize your Life series!
To read the 1st week’s post, on Organizing your Mind, click HERE!
To read the 2nd week’s post, on Organizing your Schedule, click HERE!
To read the 3rd week’s post, on Organizing your Cleaning Schedule, click HERE!
To read the 4th week’s post, on Organizing your Priorities, click HERE!
To read the 5th week’s post, on Organizing you Personal Information, click HERE!
If you are just joining in, please link up your blog here so we can all help motivate each other!
I am reading and using the book called Organize Now! by Jennifer Ford Berry to help me organize my life and let me tell ya…I LOVE IT!!!! And from what I am reading from others, they are too! :) Don’t forget, you can link up your posts about this series to Jennifer Ford Berry’s Facebook Page HERE for more blog exposure. :)
You can buy the book here…
This week is Organizing Your Finances!
There are a lot of different ways to organize your finances and the most important thing is that you just do it!!!
You can buy a program or make your own. Just use something that works for you and your family!
When my husband and I first got married, we used the very old fashioned system…paper and a pen, ha!
BUT, that worked for us! We just wrote our budget out and then we knew how much we had to spend where AND we stayed in our budget!!! We were REALLY strict!!!! Almost a little too much BUT we needed to be.
We were only 19 years old when we got married and money was TIGHT! Luckily, we had help from our families. For the first year of our marriage, we lived with Scott’s Mom to save money. That REALLY helped us financially! We had a GOAL to save enough money for a down payment for our first home (condo) and not have any credit card debt. AND WE DID IT!!! We were also very fortunate because we both received full-ride scholarships to college. That was huge for us!!! I went for 2 years and my husband went for 5. We paid our credit card bill off every month and never missed! That was REALLY important to us. (We did use a credit/debit card because of the points…hey, we like free stuff, ha!) We really sacrificed to stay DEBT FREE!! We had our daughter when my husband was still in collage and I then stayed at home with her. I worked a little and so did my husband. We pretty much NEVER bought anything new. That is one reason why I love garage sales so much! I furnished our whole condo without buying anything new! I was proud of that too, lol! I should show you those pictures sometime. We were just living within our means. We also didn’t go out to eat very much. That just didn’t make the budget. :( We didn’t have a house phone (only cells), no cable, and we did ALL house projects/repairs yourself!!! Since we bought a cheaper condo, we were able to fix it up and sell it for a good amount more. Which then helped us buy our house that we have now.
After, Scott finished school and got a real job, we bought Quicken software and linked it to our online banking to track everything. Again, our goal was to continue to NOT HAVE CREDIT CARD debt! We used Quicken for about a year, until we were comfortable with our budget. Even after my husband got his job, I continued to stay on the thrifty side. I liked staying within our means. I HATE debt and didn’t want to be in it. I still LOVE to garage sale and find a deal where I can plus!! If we want to buy something, we make sure that we can afford it…even cars. There has been times, where I wish I could just go on a huge shopping spree and go crazy at the mall but staying on a budget is more important and that is our priority! I could go without the newest of the new!! STUFF doesn’t really matter! Over the past year, I have been able to also add a little income with my Shaklee business which has allowed us to send our daughter to private school.
Currently, we do all our budgeting and bill paying online. We budget together and we both know where our money is going! We still don’t buy what we can’t pay for! We know what we have in our accounts and what our budget is for each spending category…still no cable/dish! I still buy mostly everything at garage sales and with the money we are saving from our thriftyness, we are able to give to our charities and save for retirement!!! We give a good percentage to our church and we have it come out of our account electronically to make sure we don’t spend it. That’s the same thing with our 401K fund.
What has really helped us, was that we sat down together and made a plan and stayed in our budget even when it was tight. We both agreed that we wanted to be/stay debt free (minus a mortgage). The important thing is that we stayed on track and kept our priorities in line.
GOALS FOR THIS WEEK!
- Find a place to keep your bills
- Make a list of all your expenses (you can use a program or make your own)
- Make a budget
- Schedule a time to pay bills
- Commit to your FUTURE! (Build savings/401K/Retirement)
- Ask for help (if needed)
- Set up college fund(s) and charities
How do you organize your finances?
Please link up your organized finance posts below!
How has this series helped you so far? I hope that you are enjoying it!!! :)
Please grab a button if you are linking up!
Have a great day!
Also, don’t forget that you can get a FREE SHAKEE CINCH SAMPLER KIT (over $100 value) with the purchase of a Shaklee membership (a $19.95 one time fee to save you 15% off ALL orders including your first order) or ShakleeDistributorship ($39.95) AND a $70 order at member price (MN). To get this special, place the products in your cart, and then it will tell you that you qualify for the free Cinch Sampler Kit at the top. After that, sign up as a member or distributor. You DO NOT need to place the sampler kit in your cart…it is automatic, just make sure to check if you qualify. Please note, if you become a Gold Ambassador, you do not need to place an order to get the free kit. Please email me at donahuewellness@hotmail.com for any questions. ***Plus, I will let you know of ALL OF MY NEW MEMBER SPECIALS!!!*** You can read about my Cinch results here and my sister’s amazing story here.
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