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Seriously guys...


Cerina
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I'm not saying what Cerina does is wrong or crazy, it sounds very responsible actually. I've been in situations where I've been asked for info that binder would have and not had...

 

But the amount of time, energy and thought it would take to maintain that actually makes me physically unhappy.

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That's the thing. School pays me for this. But they give me a crappy computer program. Then we have the interoffice kind of email system that is called Outlook. It allows me to see and set my schedule and such and syncs with my phone so personal scheduling can be seen on my phone (Of course I have to have the Outlook app but meh). That's a lot of time to spend and I'd rather go out and do something.

 

My home system is pretty simple. I have a file with each cats name and stuff that happens to them at the Vet gets put in there. I have a file entitled Spam and it's stuff like birth certificate and health insurance stuff. And a file entitled Car, with car things dropped in there - Toyota has a super thing through my dealership where they email me when it's time for a service and include a coupon for a $19.99 oil change plus my light comes on my dash for oil changes and they put that tiny sticker on the windowshield too. I am aiming to get 300K miles from this car and have taken good care of it. I have a IN BOX where bills are dropped and since I only get five regular bills it is pretty easy to take care of those as every single one is due within the first week of the month = car insurance, credit card bill, internet & cell phone combined (Discount!), electricity and HOA. As the mortgage is auto deducted from my account and they handle property taxes and the home insurance I never have to think about that. Then a shoebox is next to it and when I write a bill I write the day it was paid or scheduled online, the amount and the check number if a check is required. After a period of time, it all goes in the giant shredder and is composted. Usually that's at the end of the year or sooner if I deem it.

 

For my balance I know what I budget a week and take the cash out at the Bank to buy groceries, gas and fun things. When that money is gone I don't do stuff. Works great. Stuff that automatically is put in savings and 401K from my check is never thought about so I can be pleasant surprised when I finally get close to thinking about retiring. Usually there is some left over but this past two months were bad with unexpected spending so I may dip into savings for the first time in like five years.

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It actually saves time believe it or not. The time consuming part was putting it all together. I have files for everything. 1 school file for each of us, 1 medical file for each of us, 1 for each car, 1 for each creditor, several for the house (insurance, mortgage, HOA, improvements, etc.), you get the idea. I also created files for each week of the year, and anything I receive that will require attention at a later date goes into that week's file. I also stuff birthday cards, invitations, and the like into the file for the week before so I have time to mail cards or shop for gifts.

 

Throughout the week everything goes into an inbox. On Friday evenings I file everything in the inbox, either into the weekly files if it requires later action or into the other files if it just needs to be kept. A lot of the stuff in the inbox gets tossed after it's written down anyway. Then, I get my binder and plan the week.

 

I have a dry-erase weekly calendar that sticks to the fridge, and I go through all the calendars and mark any appointments, field trips, meetings or whatnot on the calendar, and then start planning meals. I'll check the freezer to see what meals I can make with what we have, and then list out everything we don't have that needs to be purchased, along with the weekly staples (bread, milk, eggs, sandwich meat, cheese, etc.). Usually I can put off going to the grocery store until Monday.

 

The majority of our bills are sent electronically and paid by autodraft. In fact, almost all of our financial stuff is electronic. I have a bills calendar and a payment tracker in the binder, but the rest is done online and with a budget program. Whenever I get a bill in my email, I write down it down on the due date in the calendar with the amount. Most of my bills are fixed amounts each month due on the same day so I just fill them all in at the beginning of the month. Trevor gets paid on Friday and it's our only source of income, so I enter in his paycheck on the register in the budget program, and then use the bill calendar to budget out each bill that will be taken out that week. I also enter weekly budgets for food, gas, household goods, and Noah's stuff (all of which I can estimate pretty well based on the schedule and meal plan.) I budget every cent of our income. After the essentials are budgeted in, I funnel the rest into sink funds/savings accounts for things like medical expenses, gifts, auto maintenance, home maintenance, vacations, and school expenses). The sink funds spread periodic expenses (Christmas gifts, HOA fees, new tires, etc.) out through the year, so when something hits the money is there.

 

All in all, this takes me about an hour. There was a lot of work and thinking involved on the front end, but weekly it's not bad. In that hour I get it all out of the way. I don't have to think about what to make for dinner every day; instead, I know exactly what I'm going to make and exactly how much time it will take to prepare so I can begin in enough time for us to eat at about the same time each day.

 

I promise you, it saves me a lot of time. And, at home, I really prefer to do most of this on paper. I get to use colored pens and highlighters, and I made my own checklists and stuff so they're pretty and make me happy. When I was working, I did most of this same sort of planning and organizing, but most of it was electronic because for some reason at work I preferred it to all be on the computer.

 

After all of this, and sometimes on Sunday nights after the boys go to bed, I start trying to plan Noah's schoolwork. I have different colored folders for each day of the week, and I plan the lessons and divvy up the worksheet and/or notes into each day's folder. Then they go into magazine files (each the same color as the day folders)(shut up) with any books we'll need and/or larger supplies. In theory, each day we'll just use the day's file and do the work in there, but that rarely happens. I still keep up the planning though, because hopefully some day it will happen like that. But for now, I let my 6 year old spend the majority of his day unstructured if that's what he wants, and we'll do school work when he asks for it (which actually does happen).

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I outlined my system above. To me your system is what I call busy work to keep busy. And the arm chair psychologist in me thinks you miss actual work.

 

My grandfather always said that your household budget and internal workings should never be so complicated that if you die no one on the house can't just step in and take over. This worked out extra good when he got dementia and grandma was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

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It actually saves time believe it or not. The time consuming part was putting it all together. I have files for everything. 1 school file for each of us, 1 medical file for each of us, 1 for each car, 1 for each creditor, several for the house (insurance, mortgage, HOA, improvements, etc.), you get the idea. I also created files for each week of the year, and anything I receive that will require attention at a later date goes into that week's file. I also stuff birthday cards, invitations, and the like into the file for the week before so I have time to mail cards or shop for gifts.

 

Throughout the week everything goes into an inbox. On Friday evenings I file everything in the inbox, either into the weekly files if it requires later action or into the other files if it just needs to be kept. A lot of the stuff in the inbox gets tossed after it's written down anyway. Then, I get my binder and plan the week.

 

I have a dry-erase weekly calendar that sticks to the fridge, and I go through all the calendars and mark any appointments, field trips, meetings or whatnot on the calendar, and then start planning meals. I'll check the freezer to see what meals I can make with what we have, and then list out everything we don't have that needs to be purchased, along with the weekly staples (bread, milk, eggs, sandwich meat, cheese, etc.). Usually I can put off going to the grocery store until Monday.

 

The majority of our bills are sent electronically and paid by autodraft. In fact, almost all of our financial stuff is electronic. I have a bills calendar and a payment tracker in the binder, but the rest is done online and with a budget program. Whenever I get a bill in my email, I write down it down on the due date in the calendar with the amount. Most of my bills are fixed amounts each month due on the same day so I just fill them all in at the beginning of the month. Trevor gets paid on Friday and it's our only source of income, so I enter in his paycheck on the register in the budget program, and then use the bill calendar to budget out each bill that will be taken out that week. I also enter weekly budgets for food, gas, household goods, and Noah's stuff (all of which I can estimate pretty well based on the schedule and meal plan.) I budget every cent of our income. After the essentials are budgeted in, I funnel the rest into sink funds/savings accounts for things like medical expenses, gifts, auto maintenance, home maintenance, vacations, and school expenses). The sink funds spread periodic expenses (Christmas gifts, HOA fees, new tires, etc.) out through the year, so when something hits the money is there.

 

All in all, this takes me about an hour. There was a lot of work and thinking involved on the front end, but weekly it's not bad. In that hour I get it all out of the way. I don't have to think about what to make for dinner every day; instead, I know exactly what I'm going to make and exactly how much time it will take to prepare so I can begin in enough time for us to eat at about the same time each day.

 

I promise you, it saves me a lot of time. And, at home, I really prefer to do most of this on paper. I get to use colored pens and highlighters, and I made my own checklists and stuff so they're pretty and make me happy. When I was working, I did most of this same sort of planning and organizing, but most of it was electronic because for some reason at work I preferred it to all be on the computer.

 

After all of this, and sometimes on Sunday nights after the boys go to bed, I start trying to plan Noah's schoolwork. I have different colored folders for each day of the week, and I plan the lessons and divvy up the worksheet and/or notes into each day's folder. Then they go into magazine files (each the same color as the day folders)(shut up) with any books we'll need and/or larger supplies. In theory, each day we'll just use the day's file and do the work in there, but that rarely happens. I still keep up the planning though, because hopefully some day it will happen like that. But for now, I let my 6 year old spend the majority of his day unstructured if that's what he wants, and we'll do school work when he asks for it (which actually does happen).

 

Well, there's a few more pages for your binder, I guess.

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I would laugh at Reese, but I spent half an hour looking for my driving licence the other day so I will sit quietly and marvel at her perseverance.

 

I attempt to organise one every six months but just succeed in putting one load of crap papers in with another load, then giving up after making it look slightly tidier

 

When it comes to money I am bang on all the time. Haven't been in my overdraft for over a year, even when I was it was an interest free one designed to coax student me out of the red and into the black!

 

Mobile banking and contactless cards are amazing!

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I just have all my bills sent to our bill payer and I get an email when it gets there, and I pay it. We won't let them have automated access to our checking account. My husband worked for a credit union for a few months and saw all sorts of bad stuff happen with that. A few things are on a pay schedule, like the mortgage, the daycare, and our timeshare dues.

Husband does all the grocery shopping because he does all the cooking. He doesn't believe in meal planning. We spend entirely too much money on food because he doesn't know how to look at a price tag, either. Fortunately we seem to live below our means in most other aspects. I used to keep a budget but it seemed like a very loose suggestion that we never followed. Finally said screw it and stopped wasting my time.

I have a huge problem with paper and I'm trying to go paperless. Sometimes being less organized is actually less work. I'm learning to let go!

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I outlined my system above. To me your system is what I call busy work to keep busy. And the arm chair psychologist in me thinks you miss actual work.

I was mostly like this while working as well. And seriously, it's not work to stay organized, just to get organized.

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It is just me so there is not much to organize. I live well within what I make so there is some overages that carry over month to month. I budget about 100 bucks a week for eating out, doing stuff with others or buying booze. All of that would go to a kid if I had one.

 

If I had kids I would do a CPA and never deal again with it.

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I have one calendar-- on my computer. It loads info from the google calendar i keep with the Former Mrs/ Tank that we both can edit for the kid schedule. Locally, the same calendar shows me when bills are due, jobs are due or when I have appointments, engagements or meetings.

 

That's pretty much everything I need for life.

 

I use Evernote as a note-keeping app where I keep notes and outlines for stories, passwords, lists of things I may need to look up, etc. This is accessible from my phone or computer. I use Wunderlist as a todo list that syncs between phone and computer.

 

I abhor scraps of paper.

 

Banking and bill paying I do 90% online. I track my purchases and every couple weeks look at the register online to make sure everything is in sync.

 

Business, medical and maintenance records are crammed into a manilla folder with no rhyme or reason and on the once in a month time I need to find something it takes a minute, but it is there.

 

All contacts are in my phone and accessible from computers as well.

 

The kid's teacher maintains a website with her lesson plan so I can help kid with homework (that he does online).

 

That's about as complicated as my life is.

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My checkbook register is a homemade Excel spreadsheet. JC has her own because we still keep separate checking accounts due to irreconcilable differences between our approaches to both math and spreadsheets. At the end of the day, our accounts do balance, though mine requires 1/100th as many man-hours to manage.

We've tried using spreadsheets for budgeting. They've been helpful when times were really tight, but when we're fine, then as long as we keep paying our bills at a steady rhythm and keep target amounts in mind for each one, everything stays covered and extra money shows up at month-end. Whenever an extra three-figure expenditure strikes (e.g., auto repair, my son's college textbooks), I step up the voluntary overtime until the scales are balanced.

Spreadsheets are nice for tracking my comics collection. Otherwise, I don't use Excel much at home. At work I generate dozens of spreadsheets weekly using simple yet effective templates I largely designed myself. My enthusiasm for Excel wanes once I'm out of office and don't have to look at lengthy accounting summaries anymore.

I've known too many auto-pay disaster stories to trust it. I still pay bills using checks by mail because it's easy enough for me to let bills stack up and then pay them in weekly sittings, as opposed to letting email notifications pile drown in my inbox and get ignored. I'd much rather control exactly when and where money exits my account than wait on notifications after the fact.

We use our trusty Simpsons calendar to scribble down events, vacation days, appointments, movie openings, and TV season premieres. It hangs over the computer desk so JC and I can both see our week-at-a-glance. Anything we fail to write down, we just cover in our regular exposition convos. From the outside looking in, sometimes when we chat we probably sound like a couple of Chris Claremont characters describing obvious things for the new readers just joining us, but it works for us, and at least we're communicating and we're not late for everything, unlike zillions of self-destructing couples out there.

I also keep a very nice, neat pile for all the to-do lists I've made over the past few years. I keep meaning to sort and prune those.

In my mind, I'm organized.

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I like paper and writing things down by hand. I think in some way it's more comforting for me. Or something. I also have tons of spiral notebooks that I use to scribble down random plans and ideas and whatnot. I like having different colored pens and markers, and I like Post-it notes. That's pretty much what started this thread...

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Oh, I have systems. Files, doccuments, folders, the whole shebang. Problem is the f*****g gremlins are always two steps ahead of me. They stash keys, they hide mail, they eat receipts ... don't even bother with warrantees and returns policies. They're in the same place where all the left socks end up. The other side of the little wormhole in the back of my dryer.

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I like paper and writing things down by hand. I think in some way it's more comforting for me. Or something. I also have tons of spiral notebooks that I use to scribble down random plans and ideas and whatnot. I like having different colored pens and markers, and I like Post-it notes. That's pretty much what started this thread...

I know several people that have a hard time remembering things unless they actually write them out by hand

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I do love office supplies. We used to do paper gradebooks and I had a lot of fun with those. And when its time for a new school year I have the best time getting supplies for kids as many can't afford them. However, highlighting and all this is linked to that is for a certain type of person. I never even used a highlighter in college.

 

I find that Six and JC's way is best for me. I used to do spread sheets for my comic book collection. I am still sad that I no longer have it.

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