Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Finance Challenge Day 3

Today's challenge is to set up a budget box. Mine is not as pretty and colorful as Toni's but it is functional. The way mine is set up actually came from It's All Too Much by Peter Walsh. Staying on top of mail was (sometimes still is) a struggle of ours.
I have a plain 'ole hanging file box, with folders for every month. In each folder goes the bills for that month and any receipts for major purchases. As I come around to that month again, I shred anything in the folder that is not pertinent to tax info or something. I have a folder for legal stuff, like traffic fines info, birth certificates, marriage license, etc. I have a folder for medical stuff, where our EOB's and duplicates from well-checks and things go. Last is my folder for taxes. I put anything we might need in there, as well as keep last year's return in there. Each return eventually gets it's own folder, and I'll shred it once's it's over 10yrs old.
Ideas I got from Toni that I'm implementing:
1) A separate folder just for pay stubs. I had been putting these in their respective month, but I think it'd be more convenient to keep them together.
2) A separate folder for print outs of our monthly budget. I've never printed these out before, and I think it might make me more goal oriented to have that hard to look back on.

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