How I did it: At first, I kept everything in a notebook. That failed. Then I kept everything in a spreadsheet, and that failed too, because I wasn't always at my computer. Basically, I couldn't ever remember to input stuff. And I'd pile up bills to try and remind myself to pay it the next time I see this bill lying on my desk, but the result was just a huge pile of paper.

So in the end, basically, I automated everything, and tried to eliminate paper where possible.

1) I set up automatic payments for all my bills that allowed it. This is probably THE most important thing.
2) opted out of receiving paper statements where possible, and have everything sent to my email
3) have gmail automatically label all my bills that come in through email so I don't have to worry about them or look at them, but can find them easily if I need them later
4) bought one filebox with folders, whenever I do receive something in the mail, I file it away in the appropriate folder immediately, and if there is some action involved, I put it in my todo list, rather than leaving the paper around to try and remind myself to pay the bill or whatever.
5) I use Mint.com to track all my expenses. This way, I don't have to input them in myself, and since you can use it from any web browser (or your iPhone) I could always keep track no matter where I was.

Resources: Gmail
Mint.com - good tool for tracking your finances
"Getting Things Done" by David Allen

---

Feb 20, 2009, 01:52PM PST | 1 comment | 1 cheer