"Get your financial house in order"

Most personal finance books start at some variation of “Chapter 1: Get your financial house in order.” Great concept. But how do we go from, “I don’t know what’s happening with my finances,” to “I feel good about my finances”? And what does “getting your financial house in order,” exactly mean?

If you’re like me, you probably have bills in random places around your house. You may have shredded some stuff, and held on to others for years and years (I actually have an old plastic bin with paper copies of all my tax returns, bank statements and credit card bills going back to 1997!). You probably use a combination of online banking and bill pay and hard copy payments and records. You may have attempted to make a budget once or twice, but who knows where your finances go now.

So how are you going to “get your house in order” when your finances are literally all around your house?

Certified professional organizer Joshua Zerkel, founder of Joshua Zerkel’s Custom Living Solutions (www.customlivingsolutions.com), has some answers for us. He specializes in organizing home offices/small offices, managing paper clutter and helping clients deal with the never-ending influx of paper, email and other information that can clutter our daily lives.

Here are Joshua’s best tips:
1. Collect all your financial "stuff" and have it in one place (he likes Pendeflex accordion folders to stay organized). For me, this means going into my home office, my coat closet, Brian’s home office and our shared mailboxes to find all the financial paperwork lying around, some organized, and some not.

2. From here, use a tool like NeatDesk desktop scanner to get a sense on how much you spend across all the areas of your life to help you make informed decisions on how you can save.

• Joshua likes Neat because it gives you an overview of your spending and is a great way to manage paper clutter (and not just your financial papers so it serves other purposes for organizing your desk and home)
• He likes Quicken to manage your investments and have a comprehensive look at your portfolio. Neat scanners and Quicken have different tools and it's a matter or what best suites you. (However, spreadsheets you create in Neat can be easily exported to Quicken.)

3. Another suggestion Joshua recommends for important papers is to store them offsite to have a backup in case your computer dies or there is some natural disaster- he likes Mozy and Anywhere Vault which are both web-based storage for scanned images and are low cost.

• As you scan into your computer, it's important to shred these documents to make sure you don't become a victim of identity theft.

• Another advantage to organizing your finances with digital tools is that you free up physical space in your home office - time to move out some of the filing cabinets!

Getting your house in order can go beyond your finances. Joshua also shared some tips for decluttering your home and office.

• Not to be confused with the web-based storage I mentioned earlier, physical off-site storage units can be a huge money suck each month, so if you have one, it's time to get in there and see what you really need. Look for treasures and bring them home. Then donate (get a tax deduction while you are at it) or sell the rest on eBay.
• He often advises clients to access everything they use on a regular basis - cell phones, cable and even home services like loan or house cleaning. Call up each company and be honest with them - tell them you want to keep their service, but would like to look at ways to reduce extra fees, even if that means just through cutting back on services. He says they will often work with you.

Thanks Joshua! We're thrilled to have your input. Now I've got to go start collecting, shredding and scanning (but not in that order). It's a great way to spend a cold winter day.