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Are you ready to feel confident about your personal and family finances? Do budgeting and budget worksheets excite you or intimidate you? If the latter, it doesn’t have to! One of the first steps to make your money work for you [rather than working for you money] is to declutter.

To declutter is to clean out the unnecessary – the distractions. It is to simplify so you can only see the most important things.

How do you know you might need to declutter your finances?

• Do you know how many credit card accounts you have open?
• Do you know what your interest rates are for each account?
• Do you know what your balance is on any checking or savings accounts?
• Do you know how much you pay in utilities each month on average?

If you answer no to any of these questions, then keep on reading! This post is for you.

I’m not sure why more schools don’t prepare you to manage your finances better. But I know I had to figure out a lot on my own. This is a compilation of a lot of the tips I’ve learned over the past 8 years.

There are affiliate links in this post. This means if you click on a link and buy something, I might receive a commission at no additional cost to you. I only recommend products that I love!

15 Ways to Declutter Your Finances

When my husband and I first got married right after college, managing finances felt overwhelming. There was so much information to go through.

It was the first time we rented a house, bought cars, had full time jobs, new loans, and we also happened to be living apart because of the military. I juggled a lot of bills.

During this time I researched budgeting tips, investment strategies, and what financial goals we REALLY should be meeting.

Throughout the past 8 years, I’ve managed our family finances and simplified my system. I’ve reduced my finance management time to less than an hour of management a month.

I found I love to share personal budgeting tips and tools with others to help them streamline their processes too.

These tips to declutter your finances will help you streamline your financial process and begin to make your money work for you.

Buy a shredder

I’m telling you right now this should be your first step to declutter your finances! As you go through the other steps you will WANT a shredder to happily clear the clutter in a safe way. We don’t need any identity stealing around here!

This shredder on Amazon had great reviews and is very similar to the one that we have in our home! You can always check the current price on Amazon to see if there are any deals.

Bonus: My kids love shredding for some reason so they are all over this decluttering step!

Pay your bills right away

Do you ever feel like you are constantly juggling due dates and schedules in your head? It’s tiring isn’t it? And then it’s REALLY frustrating when you miss something that you’ve been thinking about for a month. I know, I’ve been there.

Well, the best way I’ve found to not miss paying a bill, is to pay it immediately. Like right now. Stop procrastinating and just do it.

Go to your mailbox, sift through the bills, and sit down to your desk to pay.

Get real honest with yourself

It’s time to get real and be honest, mama. It’s time to cancel services you don’t have time to use any more, don’t enjoy, or are just plain a money pit.

Cancel that monthly subscription because you could be using your hard saved money for more fun things like… saving for a cruise! Or my favorite, getting a massage.

How do you do this?

Take a good look at each transaction charged to your accounts each month. Anything surprise you?

If you are still subscribed to that one website (re: Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Kindle Unlimited, Stitch Fix, etc.) you never have time to use anymore, cancel it.

If the newspaper is delivered to your house every week but you just don’t have time to clip those coupons, unsubscribe. Stop spending money to “potentially save money” when you never do it anyway. “Let it go, let it go…” (sorry, my daughter loves that movie).

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Set up an auto savings plan

You’ve probably heard this one already, but are you really doing it?

Check with your bank on their options for auto savings plans. Some banks have plans that will round up every purchase to a dollar and put the extra into a savings account for you. Or you could try one of these apps.

Most, if not ALL, banks allow you the opportunity to set up an automatic payment to a savings account that drafts out on a day you specified.

Tip: Start with something small the day your paycheck hits the bank. Even $10 a month is better than nothing. Try increasing the amount every paycheck by $5 until you reach your monthly saving goal. You won’t even miss the money.

Set up automatic billing

To both decrease the clutter in your house as well as any stress about paying your bills on time each month, set up automatic billing with all your service providers! When I decided to set up automatic billing, I was amazed at how much time and energy I saved each month. Like a lot.

Consolidate accounts

If you have multiple checking or savings accounts, then consolidate, consolidate, consolidate.

This is especially important if you have a significant other and have double the amount of checkings, savings, and credit cards.

You might think having joint accounts will be more difficult, but it will actually make things WAY easier in the long run. Plus, it’s good practice for communication and transparency.

I switched to paying all our bills out of one checking account and having all our deposits go into the same account. Then all I had to do was auto-transfer out savings at the beginning of each paycheck, and that was it!

This step by itself saved me an hour a month AT LEAST.

Establish 3 primary accounts

When you’re first starting out, I suggest one account for savings, one for bills, and one for flex funds. Bills are anything that well, you know, comes in as a bill that you MUST pay. (If you’re not sure, here’s a list of budgeting categories to check out).

Do you chronically over spend in your flex funds account or dip into your emergency funds?

Open a savings account at a separate bank. This will make it more difficult to dip into savings.

You will actually start seeing your emergency fund build, which will encourage you to keep saving.

Try opening an account with Capital One 360 Savings Accounts that gets 1% back on all money in it, which is way better than you’re probably getting with your credit union.

Let your money work for you and build your wealth for you.

Go green!

I already mentioned shredding what you currently have above.

But the next pro step will be to go green for all your statements. Opt to stop receiving your bills in the mail. If you need a payment reminder, most companies have an option with an e-mail reminder when the statement is ready.

Do you have a lot receipts laying around cluttering your desk or counter tops? While you might want receipts to track business expenses, chances are you don’t need to keep the hard copy. I have this small, portable receipt scanner on my wish list! It’s so cute! (Is it weird I think scanners are cute?)

Or try to scan all your receipts using an app like Wave Receipts fo’ free. Everyone loves free. <– I love this app and it integrates with free software to track my business expenses and create invoices when needed.

Keep only hard copy of your taxes – scan everything else

The only hard copy documents we keep are ones needed to support our tax documents. And even then, we only keep hard copies for 7 years. I bundle up all our tax documents at the end of tax season, put them in an envelope and put them in a bin in storage (for protection).

Scan all your other paperwork and documents if you want to keep them (Hint: This scanner is sounding better and better. Get your decluttering on).

A place for everything, and everything in its place

Benjamin Franklin had it right. The best tip for decluttering ANYTHING including your finances is to have a special place to put it.

It won’t get lost. You won’t forget about it. And you will feel more organized.

Create a rhythm that works for you.

We have a drop zone for bills waiting to be paid so we clearly know where it is as soon as it comes in from the mail.

Actually, we have three boxes to manage mail because let’s be real, it doesn’t always happen right that minute.

Mail to go through, bills to be paid, ready for shred. We love these stackable, classic letter trays to organize papers.

Consolidate bill payment dates

Another quick action you can take to declutter your finances it to change the bill pay dates to the same time of the month. If you know that ALL of your bills pay at the beginning of the month, then it will be easier to track and manage your flex funds.

Start tracking your expenses

If you’re ready to start budgeting and really managing your expenses, then the next step to decluttering your finances and making your money work for you is to start tracking your expenses.

Know exactly where your money is going each money and what you are spending it on. You can do this in excel, or on websites like Mint.com (free) or YNAB.com (try free for 34 days).

Keep things simple

If you’re new to budgeting and figuring out this finance thing, then keep it simple at first.

Only budget for savings (10 % – 20% of your income), bills (50% of your income), and flex funds the rest.

If you’re looking for a more in depth list of budget categories and you’re ready to take budgeting to the next level, then try this list of 58 Budget Categories You Need to Begin Living Frugally or the 2019 Simple Budget Worksheet Template Printable.

Take all but one or two credit cards out of your wallet

Finally, if you have multiple credit cards, one of the best ways to stop spending on those accounts is to take them out of your wallet and leave them at home.

Another option might even be to cut up the card (if you’re so bold). While I don’t necessarily recommend closing your credit card account (because that can affect credit score), I do recommend leaving all but one or two main credit cards at home.

We only carry our USAA Credit Card that gets us 2.5% back on every purchase, our Target checking card which gets us 5% back at Target (duh), and our American Express Blue Cash Preferred card that gets us 6% back on all groceries, 3% back on gas (plus we buy Amazon and Lowe’s gift cards at our local Kroger to get both 6% back & fuel points… major savings… just saying!)

You may think this goes against what I just recommend to you, but I want to remind you we’ve been doing this for 8 years and we’ve got systems in place to manage our accounts, pay our credit cards every month, and maximize rewards. Perhaps this will be another post another day!

If all this budget talk is making you happy, check out Mom’s Budget Worksheet Bundle! It’s the bundle I created with you in mind to:

• Set realistic monthly goals
• Give every dollar a job to do with the zero sum spreadsheet
• Help set big and small goals for your family
• Create space to afford things like a Mom’s Day out Program
• Help find margin to get a nanny, if that’s what you want
• Focus on your goals daily

Click here to be read more about Mom’s Budget Worksheet and to sign-up to be notified when it’s ready to launch! Early bird’s will get a special discounted price.

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