Financial Organization or Money Monday

About two years ago I started Money Mondays. Early Monday morning I get up and get my affairs in order if you will. I balance our bank account. I get deposits ready if I have any. I pay bills. I generally use the time to increase my awareness of what’s going on financially around here. It occurred to me this morning that as I strive to be more present in my spending and focused in my saving I have actually established some pretty good routines. I decided today even if I’m not be Jean Chatzky or Suze Orman, I can still share what I do and maybe it will help someone else live a Financially Conscious-cash only- life. So here are my top four Money Monday (and rest of the week) practices:

1. Track spending. Write down in your check book, a notebook, your cell phone-wherever everything you spend and where. Choose the method that’s easiest for you. I tried Mint.com and while it is a fantastic idea, it was more than I could handle organizationally. People swear by Quicken software too and of course there are a million phone apps for budgeting. For me, I needed simple and clear. I have a black notebook where I write down everything from bills to lattes. Not only does it keep me conscious of my spending, it helps me budget for the future. If you figure out what school supplies cost one year you know what to expect the next.
2. Pay Bills Online. I utilize both my bank for bill pay and companies’ online pay sites too. This not only helps me see in black and white what our monthly bills equal, but it saves a tone of time. We are still in transition, which means we are still month to month as far as spending goes. So, I manually input information every month. My goal though is to know exactly what comes in and goes out every month so that I can input bill information once and then they’ll just magically get paid every cycle by the bank without me having to do it myself. A girl’s gotta have goals right?
3. Discuss spending with your mate. I am in charge of the bank here so I handle the budget and financial plan. However, my husband has expenses that has from month to month. After some frustration and more overdraft fees than I’d like to admit, I finally helped him see I need some advance warning for when he needs to withdrawal cash. Now we chat at least twice a month (with paydays looming) about what he needs for travel, meetings, etc. I also nag (or gently remind depending on the perspective) him about getting paperwork in on time so we get reimbursed for all this. These meetings have really helped our bank account and subsequently our marriage. Life is much easier when I know we’re a team and he’s not trying to sabotage my efforts!
4. Re-Budget every 30-60-90 days. For many of you an annual budget may be enough. For us, as we learn more about our spending and continually chip away at debt, we are constantly in flux. We need to reassess frequently. For every bill we pay off, there are more that need our attention but often the payments change. It is imperative that we don’t consider anything “free money”. When we pay off the car, we need to put that money toward hospital bills or other debt as well as increasing our saving. We re-budget every month right now. I have a rough idea what we spend and make, but I sit down every 30th of the month and figure out what the next 30 days will look like. There are fewer surprises this way and we get to celebrate each little victory as it comes.

The last thing I’ll say that’s not really a tip just a practice. I go over the logs of the last year pretty often because even though some days it still feels like we’re under a huge mountain of mistakes, we have also made progress and even carved a pretty large slice in the mountain. Reminding myself and The Husband of that every month helps. We tear up bills. We check off lists. We high-five. We take a minute to imagine the day when it’s ALL gone. Then, we pat ourselves on the back and quickly head back to the business of the day.