It’s easy to have certain bills, payments, sets of income, or loans get lost in the overall financial portfolio of your life. And the more of them get away from you, the harder they are to wrangle back into practical consciousness.
So, your best bet is to create some type of practical personal finance reminder system. And there are several ways you can do this, but five steps that you can take no matter what are included below, and involve you being aware of loan rates, including all of your accounts in your main budget, putting as many bills as possible on autopay, using spreadsheets to help you organize as necessary, and keeping a physical record of bank statements.
Be Aware of Loan Rates
What are the different kinds of loans you’ll typically have to deal with. You can get payday loans, you can have business loans, school loans, car loans – you name it, there’s the possibility of a loan for it. But, each of those different types of loans have different sets of rates attached to them, which is why, in your personal reminder system, you need to have all of these in black and white as a reference. This is one way for you to avoid accruing interest without understanding why.
Include All of Your Accounts In Your Main Budgeting App
When you sign up for a main budgeting app, be sure that you include all of your account on it. If you leave some things out, like loans for example, or only have a few of your credit cards listed instead of all of them, you can get a skewed idea of how much money you have, and where it’s going. It may be a bit of a process to get all of the information in initially, but it will definitely be worth it to understand the totality of your financial portfolio.
Put As Much As You Can On Autopay
Almost every bill that you have these days will have some sort of autopay option. As long as you keep enough money in your primary bank account, it’s much better to just have this going all the time, than to potentially forget about a bill and have it come back to haunt you later. And to make sure the payments are going through, just check your main budget app regularly.
Use Spreadsheets To Help Organize
And you can also use your own spreadsheet format to help out your organizational spectrum as well. Simply starting with a blank Excel sheet gives you an enormous amount of power when it comes to budgeting, and you can use the math functions in it as well.
Keep a Physical Record of Bank Statements
It’s always important to keep a physical record of bank statements as well. It’s great to have things digitally, but there are times when servers go down, when data gets lost, or when you have to have physical proof of certain conditions during various financial times.
