How do you organise the money and paperwork side of your life?

[PeckaRolloverAgain]

DH and I are having a financial and paperwork clearout starting tonight and would love to hear how you deal with the paperwork mountain and financial affairs for your family.

At the moment I have notice boards jam packed, piles everywhere, unopened letters etc

Help me purlease

I have a ring binder for the house (insurances etc) include personal stuff in their too like birth certs etc, another file for finance - banks, bonds, wage slips, tax and another for the cars. Works for me!

I think the key thing is, once you have sorted your paperwork out - don't let it build up. Open mail daily and bin/recycle junk. Have a "pending" file for things that need dealing with and make sure you set aside time at least twice a week to do it. Otherwise it just becomes to massive a chore.

For our financial affairs I bought a cheap finance package on Amazon for £20 (Microsoft Money 2002) and put all our accounts on our laptop so we can see at a glance how much we have (or don't have ). It takes a while to set up - you can enter all your direct debits etc onto it but it is very useful and stops overspending. Again, you need to set aside time at least twice a week to keep it accurate.

Best of luck.

ring binder?! we have a filing cabinet...

I (not DH ) open everything as it arrives and deal with it immediately (write cheque and put in envelope ready to post, fire up laptop and pay online, write event date on calendar etc) then put it in a basket for filing.
TBH I don't do the transfer from basket to filing cabinet that often but because I know there's nothing in there that needs action it doesn't really matter.

All the money is managed online so it generates minumum paperwork and we do a Grand Review twice a year - once in March when it's ISA time and once in October when DH's business financial year finishes.

One system I love the name of but have never tried is to have three trays/baskets - 'In' for things yet to be looked at, 'Out' for things that are finished and need filing or posting, and 'Shake It All About' for things that are in progress!

we have a couple of filing cabinets - one in the study, one under the stairs

We also have a filing cabinet - don't know how we managed without it!
Not really all that organised about things day to day so shouldn't try to give advice about that. Things come in, I deal with them and then dump them in a 'to file' pile. Our main risk area is between arrival and dealing with - we don't really have anywhere foolproof to keep them so I just tend to have them hanging around on the table and hope they don't get lost!

A lockable fireproof box for "permanent data" or important policies - so birth certs, passports, red books, and house insurance.

A concertina file with alphabet tags for guarentees/receipts/instruction manuals - so under d goes dishwasher receipt/guarentee/manual. I find this needs weeding annually as I'm good about adding new stuff but not so hot on removing the old (found I had 4 video manuals!)

For everthing else I keep a file by institution and drop in the correspondence. I'm not too worried by date order etc so these are hanging files. The only exception is car and house insuracne which go into my fireproof box above - in part this is due to the fact that I shop around each year, so can't always remember the institution!

One set of 3 trays - "In", "pending" "to be filed". And I open the mail each day by the bin.

Oh - one final exception is tax, which I file by tax year.

I've got 3 big ring binders. One loosely titled 'children', one has bill type things in it - phone, water, gas, electricity, sky etc and the other has investment type stuff in it - endowments, pensions and I think that one might have the car documents in it as well.

I open post straight away and deal with anything that needs dealing with and then I have a pile for 'filing' and I file the lot when I get round to it. Also intermittently go through files and chuck out stuff that is not needed cos it's old.

We also have microsoft money and I keep a running total for our bank accounts and also the credit card so I've got a good idea of what the bill will be (important because it's cleared every month by direct debit from our bank account so we can't just go mad on it and then not pay it).

I do all of this - dh has a good idea of where we are at but I manage it all.

Like MrsBadger - I write cheques for bills that don't need paying straight away but I sort them out anyway, put a note in my organiser for the day it needs posting/paying online and also put into 'money' so it's accounted for.

I have 3 folders, one for house, one for car, one for everything else.I open and pay/put on calender etc then ina basket for filing.But the filing very rarely gets done

I am terrible for letting the post pile up, but have a splurge at it every three weeks or so, but always open up cc bills, etc. and pay immediately.

Filing cabinet here as well, and everything has a separate folder, in alpha order.

I have a folder for everything, if its something worth keeping it gets one - never have a miscellaneous folder, there's no such thing! (can you tell I'm a secretary!)

don't keep crap

and bank online.

I have 2 big boxes crammed under the bed.
I need a third.
Money is online, transfered to where its needed on payday mostly.
Any cash things, savings for car tax etc are in envelopes with how much is in there on the front and dated...for when I borrow it and have to pay it back!

Have seperate folders for bills/recipts/accounts etc.
Also keep a cash book and mark down what is spent daily to keep a running total on the account total. Prefer this to using computer.