Organize Your Personal Finances ...In No Time

Organize Your Personal Finances ...In No Time

by Debbie Stanley
Released August 2004
Publisher(s): Que
ISBN: 9780789731791

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Book description

Drowning in a pile of bills, receipts and bank statements and don't know how to swim to the top? Organize Your Personal Finances In No Time will be your lifesaver. Written by a professional organizer and coach for the chronically disorganized, this do-it-yourself guide will show you how to create a fool-proof, easy-to-maintain financial system in a single day. Written in a unique step-by-step, to-do list approach, you will master skills such as tracking income and expenses, bill paying, creating a file system and shopping with efficiency. Then, learn to take all of your new skills and apply them to creating a savings plan, a budget and graphs to illustrate spending habits and debt details. When it comes to your finances, if the choice becomes sink or swim, let Organize Your Personal Finances In No Time help you swim.

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

Product information

  • Title: Organize Your Personal Finances ...In No Time
  • Author(s): Debbie Stanley
  • Release date: August 2004
  • Publisher(s): Que
  • ISBN: 9780789731791