Paying the Bills: My Single Step Personal Finance Challenge
July 17, 2008 by Miranda Marquit
Filed under Finance
On Monday, Mrs. Micah issued this personal finance challenge:
Find one step you can take to make your financial system better or more organized.
Everyone has a personal finance system — even if you don’t think you have. Think about how you handle your income and your expenses, how you pay your bills, how you keep track of your everyday purchases. That is your personal financial system.
Could it be more organized? Mine could.
My single step is going to be setting a certain time each week to pay bills and briefly review my accounts.
A couple months ago, I had a bit of a cash flow problem. It happened when I mixed a couple of accounts. I vowed then not to let it happen again. But as my desk piled up with bills, and I went a couple of weeks without updating my situation in the personal finance software, I realized I was on the verge of something similar.
So here is what I plan to do to make my personal financial system more organized:
Every Wednesday, I will go through my bills and write checks for what arrived since the previous Wednesday. And while I’m at it, I will also do a spot check to ensure that my bank accounts match the information I have in my personal finance software.
Here are some others who have shared goals from the single step personal finance challenge:
- Gather Little By Little
- The Dangling Conversation
- Frugal Vet Tech
- My Two Dollars
- Plonkee Monkey
- RacerX
- Credit Withdrawal
- The Wisdom Journal
- We Like Money
- Bible Money Matters
*Update 7/18/08: Mrs. Micah has posted a follow-up/round-up post about the personal finance challenge.*
What’s your single step personal finance goal?
image credit: sxc.hu
Hi Miranda:
I enjoyed your post, as I always do.
I don’t know if you’d be interested in blogging about this, but I thought you might find it interesting;
Here’s an interesting story you may want to share with your readers both as a warning about vending or other scams that use well-known names to add credibility, and the damage a company’s reputation can suffer by associating with the wrong people. While Red Bull spends millions in advertising and sports sponsorships to create a positive image, a bad vending franchise program has ignited a controversy involving a very angry & vocal group of investors. Feel free to link to and or quote from the dozens of comments they are leaving on franchise watchdog site Unhappy Franchisee and Franchise Pick.
Take care. Have a great weekend!
Thanks for the tip! You do need to be careful about what kinds of ventures you put your money into.
Thanks for the link! The single step you’ve chosen is a great one – it’s something I could also improve on. Right now, my “goal” is to update our budget program with recent transactions once a week, but it often ends up being every two weeks. Updating once a week would probably help us stay on top of our budget better.
Sounds like a great plan. Knowing you’ll get it all done at once means you don’t have to worry about it in the meantime. The worrying really get me.