Organize Your Personal Finances ...In No Time

Table of contents

1. Copyright
2. About the Author
3. Acknowledgments
4. We Want to Hear from You!
5. Introduction
6. Capture the Numbers
   1. Tracking Your Money
      1. Getting Your Mind Around the Task Ahead
      2. Arming Yourself with the Right Organization System
      3. Building a Fence to Snare Every Last Scrap of Your Financial Information
      4. Creating an Income and Expense Tracking Document
      5. Managing Joint Accounts: A Five-Point Peace Plan
      6. Summary
   2. Getting the Figures to Match
      1. Learning to Reconcile Your Accounts the Old-Fashioned Way
      2. Letting Your Computer Do the Work
      3. Backing Up Financial Data on Your Computer
      4. Summary
   3. Avoiding Late Fees and Overdrafts
      1. When Time Flies, So Does Money: Finding a System for On-Time Payments
      2. Finding the Best Way to Pay
      3. Less Painful Bill-Paying
      4. Summary
7. Corral the Paper
   1. Fighting the Data Deluge
      1. Incoming! Taking Control of Paper at the Point of Entry
      2. What about Incoming Paper from Other Sources?
      3. Summary
   2. Here to Stay: Storing Documents for Easy Retrieval
      1. File or Pile? Choosing Paper Storage Options
      2. Step 1: Divide Your Documents into Groups
      3. A Quick Lesson in Categorizing
      4. Step 2: Subdivide Your Frequent Files Group into Categories
      5. Step 3: Label Your Folders and Start Filing!
      6. Step 4: Create Archive Files
      7. Summary
   3. Proving It's Yours, Or Should Be
      1. Building Your Room-by-Room Files
      2. Creating a Property Inventory
      3. Summary
8. Advanced Projects
   1. Be an Organized Consumer
      1. No More Roaming the Aisles
      2. Reducing Bulky Catalog Clutter
      3. Becoming a Master Listmaker for More Organized Shopping
      4. Never Again Wonder, “Did I Get That?”
      5. Summary
   2. Learn More from Your Organized Data
      1. Calculating Your Personal Profits and Losses
      2. Getting In-Depth with Your Debt
      3. Taking a Close Look at Your Spending Patterns
      4. Do You Live Beyond Your Means?
      5. Using Your Data to Organize a Budget
      6. Summary
   3. Conclusion
      1. The “Just Do It” Factor
      2. Use Your System
      3. Farewell
   4. Further Resources
      1. Products and Services Recommended in This Book
      2. Financial Information and Counseling
      3. Professional Organizing Information and Referrals
   5. Sample Finance Forms
9. Index