Blog: Minimizing Financial Clutter
Organizing Your Finances: It's A Puzzle to Me
My children are both in their twenties now, but my family still enjoys getting some sort of new "toy" for Christmas every year. Last Christmas, our new toy was a murder mystery puzzle. It kept us occupied on Christmas afternoon – and for several weeks afterward. Normally, when you put a puzzle together, you have a picture on the box to use as a guide; you know what the end result is going to look like. Since this puzzle was going to give the solution to the murder mystery, however, we were flying blind. There was no picture to guide us; we didn't know what we were creating until we had created it.
It's hard to arrive at your destination without a map. (It's really hard to arrive at your destination if you don't know where you're going.)
Our finances can be like that murder mystery puzzle – lots of little pieces of income and expenses, but no clear picture of the life we want to create. We move the pieces around randomly, spending money here and there, with little regard for how those small decisions will affect our overall financial picture.
To organize our finances, we must create that picture first. Your individual or family "financial picture" is your vision for the life you want to lead at specific points in the future. My picture will look different from your picture.
It helps to draw a real picture. What will your house look like? Do you see your children walking across a stage, receiving their college diplomas? What do you see yourself doing during retirement?
Once you have a picture of your life as you wish it to be, you can start assembling your puzzle to make it happen.
posted on: 11/16/2008 11:30:00 AM by Katherine Trezise
category: Finances
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Minimizing Financial Clutter
by Katherine Trezise
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About Katherine:
Katherine Trezise is president of Absolutely Organized, based in Baltimore, MD. She is president-elect of the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization. Katherine holds a masters degree in business administration, is a Certified Professional Organizer® and a Certified Professional Organizer in Chronic Disorganization®. Absolutely Organized specializes in helping people organize their homes, paperwork and financial records to make room in their lives for the things, people and activities that are most important to them.
Katherine's Website:
www.absolutely-organized.com
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