I take 5 minutes a day to track expenses in my budget spreadsheet, download bank transactions etc. That helps me curb my spending.

Finally, being organized at work means I save time – little time is wasted looking for things on a messy desk, being more prepared for meetings so they go faster and I don’t waste time on unproductive things and I’m finishing projects on time.

I’m far from where I want to be but being organized at home and at work, but I’m getting much better at it. Even a little organization can save time!

Rent, food, entertainment, trips, transportation, bills, insurance, ETC.
This includes out-of-wallet money, credit card usage, debit card usage
(though I use CC 95% of the time)

I also keep track of how much money I make each month, how much expenses I have, and any other source of income or expenditures.

This is a GREAT way for me to keep track of my spending habits. Although I already saved over 50% of every paycheck I receive into the bank, sometimes I was finding that I didnt’t know where my money was going..

So now that I have began this, I have raised my ’spending productivity’(?) by noticeable increments!
I now save 60-70% of my income every month.

Also regarding organized, I do have drawers in my room for my business, and a small filing cabinet for every catagory of paper. Be it receipts, bills, bank statements, insurance, dental; etc.

For instance, one guideline from GTD that I liked a lot goes something like this: “If something needs to be done and takes less than 2 minutes, _do it now_.” Small things I used to procrastinate doing now get done right away, and that frees me up from the stress of thinking about doing them. So when I want to relax, I can really relax, and not worry about the little things piling up.

I do find it frustrating that I file things away and keep them for future reference while my wife throws most things away. When something breaks it becomes hard to get any favourable resolution if you have thrown away your receipt.

My wife had the unfortunate incident happen to her that may have been directly related to her less organized attitude. Last year she realized when asked for ID that her licence had expired years ago. While she had received annual plate licence renewals she didn’t remember getting the drivers licence renewal. Because of that she had to take the written, the road and the highway tests!

She was a nervous wreck because of the 3 point turn, the parallel parking (we don’t own the fancy self-parking cars but it is also rare we would need to parallel park) and the simple fact that our driving skills lapse into less than ideal examples.

She had to take 2 days off work for the tests. That is a pretty significant cost but a lesson learned.

I find at work that people spend a lot of time searching for emails or files on their computer. If you think about how much productivity is lost in Canada alone in one year it probably would be close to $1 billion. While I find Google Desktop to be far superior to Windows Search our company won’t allow it. I didn’t know I was living in the Republic of China.

I buy fruits and veggies too – but generally lasts about 2 weeks – which is fine with me since I can always go home and pick produce from my parent’s gardens on the weekends when i go back. I also stock caned tuna, crackers, salted plum, fish flakes (from japanese food market), rice, spaghetti noodles, spaghetti sauce. This basically lasts me for an entire month.

But I also eat out too – twice a week during work week – & at parent’s house or friend’s house on weekends.

For us, late payment & interest charges had nothing to do with cash flow problems, they were 100% the result of laziness, forgetfulness, or procrastination!

It’s nice to hear I’m not alone in missing the organization gene. I wonder sometimes if it’s closely tied to the mapping gene. I seem to be missing that whole area of my brain.

Also goes with food too – I only do grocery shopping once a month and also buy things that are easy and fast to prepare – no need for menus.

Of course I don’t have a family so – it’s a bit different.

It actually takes alot of work but the easiest one for me is menu planning (family of foodies here) and it really cuts down the shopping time in the grocery store and forces us to really use up every bit of produce in our fridge (before planning, we would be throwing out rotten vegetables almost weekly!)

Now I just have to master organizing the home. We really hate housework over here. Thanks for the book suggestions!

I’m not a big fan of the menus, though. I need to give it another try, because my current method isn’t very efficient, but sometimes I just don’t (or can’t) eat what I planned to, and then it gets annoying.

What else – just organized the master closet with lots of new shelves and rods, so that’s allowed us to bring all of our clothes back from the far-flung closets and know what we actually have. Reckon this will prevent us from buying clothes we don’t need.

Also, we try to gas up at the Superstore (seems to be about a cent/litre cheaper most days), which also generates 2c/litre in Loblaws bucks (plus 1% free groceries in PC points on the MC). Then tuck the receipt under the car visor so that’s it’s available next time we’re at the grocery store.

And FT – maybe I just don’t have a good pop-up blocker, but those talking bobble-heads from St. Lucia are driving me nuts.