Have you ever paid a library fine (or had to pay to replace a lost book)? Have you ever paid a late fee on a bill because you lost it or simply forgot to pay it on time? Have you ever intended to return something you bought at the store but didn’t get to it until it was past the return period? Have you ever bought a duplicate of a household item because you couldn’t find the original one? What about rebates, free coupons, or gift cards– have you ever failed to redeem?
If you answered yes to any of those questions, then you can agree that being organized saves money.
There’s no doubt that some people are just naturally more organized than others, but I”m willing to bet that we’ve all had some experience where being disorganized has literally cost us money! We would really love to hear some personal experiences from you about how you’ve saved money by being organized OR about how being disorganized has done the opposite.
We have a few tips and ideas to share, but I really feel like we can learn a lot from each other on this one. I can’t wait to read about your wins and fails regarding organization.
Let’s look at some areas in our lives where improved organization will save us money. Be thinking about the changes that YOU can implement to become a little more organized. First we’ll talk about organizing your space, then about being organized when it comes to time and energy.
Organizing Your Space to Save Money
I will be the first to admit that I am not qualified to show you how to organize every inch of your House. I don’t have the answer for you to prevent losing the library books your kids check out and I can’t help you keep track of your reading glasses so you don’t have to go back to the store to get a third pair.
Today we just want to focus on one area of your house: where the finances happen. Maybe it’s your office or computer desk. Maybe it’s on your kitchen counter. Maybe you’ve got your financial stuff strewn throughout the house.
Here are some things to think about when organizing your financial space and stuff:
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- Designate a place for bills– Keep all your current bills together. When bills come in the mail put them in their spot immediately. When you have your monthly budgeting meeting (we’ll talk about that next week), you will have them all together.
- File old financial papers– It’s easy to let last month’s statements and bills clutter the space for this month’s papers. Create and use a filing system to take care of old statements, bills, and receipts. Maybe it’s as simple as a single drawer you use. You may need to reference them later, but once they are paid, they should no longer be under your nose.
- Go paperless– Opt for as little financial paperwork as possible. There are always a few things that come in on paper, but we’ve managed to make our personal finances nearly entirely paperless, and for us, it’s a huge time saver. Pretty much every bank, credit card, or financial institution will offer paperless statements. If you’re not already paperless, give it a try.
Organize Your Time & Energy to Save Money
Your time is precious. Your energy is limited. You will work faster and more efficiently if you are organized. With simple systems and organized habits you will save money and not waste valuable resources.
Here are a few ideas for being more organized with your time and energy:
- Consolidate your activities– Look at your calendar and plan your outings and flexible activities around activities that are already set. Think about your driving route to make your errands most efficient.
- Plan a weekly (or monthly) menu– Having a organized menu will save you money and sanity (which is priceless). We talked about planning a menu for cooking dinner at home back on Day 5, but you can do it for all your meals and snacks.
- Make one trip to the grocery store– When your menu is organized and you’ve planned a grocery list, you should be able to do all your shopping at once for at least a week. If you’ve mastered that, try only going every two weeks. You’ll save time, gas, and money.
- Pay bills on time– Set aside a day each month when you will pay all your bills. We do ours at our monthly budgeting meeting. I used to wait until the due date to pay credit card bills, thinking that by holding onto my money longer would earn me a little interest. Accidentally missing the due date and getting a late fee will more than negate any benefit for holding onto your money a little longer. Trust me!
- Keep a shopping list– In addition to a grocery list, keep a list of other household necessities. Keep your list on your phone or in a place where you have easy access. With an ongoing list, you’ll be able to get what you need when you’re at the store and won’t have to make special trips for the things you forgot.
Challenge—Day 13
Okay! This is your chance for a little show and tell. Well just tell, I guess. For today’s challenge, we want you to think about a time when not being organized has cost you money OR how being organized has saved you money. Share in the comments below. Then choose one change you will make to be more organized.
Today was a lighter topic, but on Day 14 we’ll be back in the budgeting trenches!
This is an awesome list. I’m pretty obsessive about organization — just part of my personality. I’d say I’m on top of every element of our finances about 99 per cent of the time.
That said, one specific thing that’s tripped us up a bit the last few months is our insurance. Because we stash money for bills in a different account (so it doesn’t get spent by accident), there have been a couple times where I forgot to transfer the cash over before it’s withdrawn…resulting in having to pay for the overdraft protection fee. Only $5 but ugh. Most months, I am pretty good to remember to move the cash over on time and avoid that but sometimes, it doesn’t work out that way.
To fix it, I’ve set a reminder in my phone to transfer the cash in advance. We only pay for the overdraft protection when we use it, so hopefully doing this will help us avoid that in the future.
Loving the posts lately, girl! Good to see you back and hope all is going well with the family!
Hooray for having an organized personality! Good idea to set a phone reminder to move the money over. And I can’t believe that the overdraf fee is only $5!
Thanks for the kind words Tara! 🙂
The $5 overdraft fee is part of a feature I added to my bank account eons ago when I uh…was less organized re: finances than I am today. I had a couple instances where something like this happened — I forgot to move money into the right account and got dinged with a $40 NSF charge (also, can we take a minute on the whole NSF charge? Like, come on, bank. I didn’t have money in the account for the original charge — what makes you think I have $40 EXTRA on top of that? Ugh. ANYWAY). It ticked me off so I called the bank and, well, now we have this overdraft thing. If we use it, we pay for it. The goal, of course, is not to use it 🙂
Tara, I’ve done this as well – and what I’ve done in my google calendar is to go through and set reminders for when promotional interest rates (e.g. 0% interest for X number of months) are expiring so I don’t end up paying that shockingly high rate on the balances once the months end. This has saved me a LOT of money and grief, especially on my Lowe’s card.
That is super smart! I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to actually set a reminder (in my phone calendar, but a calendar none the less) sooner. Nice to know someone else who has done this and found success with it! I’m pretty organized in general, but even organized folks need reminders sometimes!
For the first time in years, I kept track of all my Christmas shopping receipts. Then when it was time to wrap gifts and I found that I had a few extra things or had changed my mind on items, I returned every single one. In the past, I would have put any small-ish leftover gifts into my emergency gift box for parties that we get invited to, but they sometimes sit in there for years because I end up buying more gifts… It was a great feeling to return things and know exactly what Christmas actually cost us this year.
That’s awesome Elizabeth! Good job being on top of the returns!!
Elizabeth, an idea for getting rid of all those presents, if your kids are still little enough that this will fly – I realised last year that my kids are being invited to a lot fewer parties as they get older. My son loves money and he loves games and he wanted to incorporate the two for his 11th birthday. So, we had a carnival birthday party. All of those little leftover party bag prizes became prizes for games, and then depending on how many bean bags went into the hole or how many rings went over the stick they also got tickets, which could be cashed in for bigger prizes – a huge assortment of stuff I wanted to get rid of, from things I’d stashed in the gift cabinet that my kids kept rejecting as gifts for their friends, to holiday decorations I wanted to get rid of, to toys my kids never played with, never-used craft supplies they’ve outgrown, etc. The bigger presents (a board game, a couple of puzzles, etc.) went in a raffle. This was hugely popular. The kids had a blast. I thought the games would maybe last for half an hour; an hour and a half later they still didn’t want to quit! It was so cute hearing the kids talk about what they wanted to buy with their “money.” My son’s a Christmas Eve baby so his birthday party was close to Christmas, and several kids did their Christmas shopping from the prize table (after, of course, getting what they wanted for themselves first!) Then at the end we had a free-for-all where all the leftover prizes were just up for grabs. Some kids walked away with feed-lot bags full of prizes. And I cleared out an embarrassing number of bins from our shed. Of course I ended up buying more prizes to supplement my leftovers (3D erasers are a huge hit with the tween crowd) and some of the stuff I maybe could’ve sold at a garage sale; but we’re down a long drive down a very quiet road half an hour from town, nobody’s going to bother coming, and I couldn’t be bothered. And most of it was too little to sell anyway – I mean, who is going to buy a temporary tattoo of a snake? (My daughter’s 9th birthday had a creepy-crawly theme. She’s 13 now.) The teachers at the local primary school tell me I’m known for my parties, but this was by far the best party I’ve ever thrown, and it was such a great way of having a clear-out.
All of our bills are on auto pay. I run into a problem when I am running errands and I reach into my wallet and I find my debit card gone. The last child that I let use it did not put it back. Then I use my credit card for something. I try hard to pay it off when I am done but sometimes forget. Then there is always a surprise when budgeting. That is one thing I like about YNAB. If I use my credit card I can have the money set aside for the bill instead of forgetting I already spent the money.
One of our wins is that our bills are paid and I do not have to worry about it. We have had some family crisis where it was the last thing I had time for. After the near death of one of our children it took about 3 months before I had the time to look at the accounts. All was well.
That’s a great point about having bills on autopay. That’s definitely not something you want to have to think about when your mind is on more important things. I’m glad you didn’t have to worry about the bills during that time. And so glad you didn’t lose your child!
I moved recently and got a great deal on a large storage unit. I kept that unit to help de-clutter the house a bit, but the rent went up… so I went and organized everything in the unit, realized what could go back in the house, what could go in the trash, what we could sell, and what we wanted to keep. When we realized that we needed a unit 1/3 the size of what we had, that saved us a HUGE amount of cash every month. We’re reorganizing at home to hopefully get rid of the unit for good, but with my significant other’s handyman service, downsizing again to a smaller unit may be a more realistic goal.
That’s a good one Ginger! Downsizing your storage unit is a great way to save money by being more organized!
I’m organized: all my receipts are stapled together every week and go on the fridge, where I double check if I’ve eneterd them into GnuCash before I tear them up; I pay all my utility bills the day they arrive and I’ve set up email alerts so that I don’t forget; I’ve set up an automatic statement balance debit for my credit card so that score will develop and not take a hit from the get go; I’ve gone electronic on my bills, so that I don’t destroy our planet!
For grocery shopping: I make a few regular purchases each week like bread, fruits, milk and some veggies. I may visit mid week sometime to pick up some cheap cuts of meat for my slow cooker. I don’t have a car, so planning on capitalizing your shopping to one cart that you can lug back home is incentive.
I remember my college days of walking home from the grocery store. It didn’t take long before I learned how much was too much to carry home!
We use the Out of Milk app for our grocery lists. I can input items either from the computer or the phone and then sync it to both our phones (although sometimes the sync function has been a bit wonky). We each add items as we see we’re getting low on something. I add items after checking the weekly ads, too, and the app itself shows you some local for-sale items. You can organize the list by customized categories. Because I am unable to shop due to some mobility issues and because he worked at a grocery store all through his high school through college years, my husband does all grocery shopping. He has set up categories that make sense to him. What’s even better? If I remember something while he’s out shopping, I can check to see if he’s already passed up the aisle that item might be on or has yet to reach it, since he crosses off items as he adds them to the cart. If he hasn’t yet reached that aisle, I add the item. If he’s already finished with that aisle, I don’t add it unless it’s a really necessary item as I don’t want him to have to backtrack. He does enough! This function doesn’t work as well now that his phone is a RW phone, though, as he doesn’t have data while at the store. You can have several lists for different stores, and there are many functions we don’t use. Although we occasionally have snafus (old lists showing up on our phones), this has made list-keeping so much easier. There are other grocery list apps out there, too.
That sounds like a neat app! That’s crazy that you can add things while he’s shopping!
I have a file folder for *everything* — makes it really easy to find stuff. The only problem is I have to take the time to actually file my papers so I can find them again when I want them 🙂
Yes! I have a stack of things that needs to be filed. Even though it only takes a minute, I always put off actually filing things!
Planning our meals was huge for us. We recently put a big white board in our kitchen where we write down our dinners for the upcoming week. It saves us money and more importantly keeps my wife sane!
Sanity is priceless! 🙂
I discovered the app Wonderlist which I am able to share with my husband. Whenever we notice that there is something that we need during the week, one of us puts it on the app and then we have a full list when we have to go shopping. It has saved a lot of multiple trips for us!
Ooo I like the idea of sharing a list like that!
This is a great list! I switched all of my bills to ebills to cut down on paper waste. I even created an email account that is just for receiving and paying bills, which has really helped me stay organized. But as much as I love technology, I also have a planner that I use 24/7 that I love to use for all my meals, grocery lists, etc.
Taking care of bills electronically works well for us too (though some companies still insist on sending a paper bill too)!
Being organized has made it so we don’t feel the need to upsize our living space (980 sq ft) even though we have 3 children (one’s 14.5 years old) that we homeschool and an active dog. I spend less time looking for things. I also spend less time caring for things because after I got organized I realized there were a lot of things I was keeping that we weren’t using on a regular basis. We’ve been able to save a lot of money by living smaller.
Not having to upsize (or feeling like you need to) is a huge money-saver! Organization is key to making small living spaces work!