Inexpensively

Helping you live your life, inexpensively.

  • Money Saving Ideas
    • Budgeting
      • Debt Management
      • Financial Planning
      • Taxes
    • Eating
      • Cooking
      • Dining
      • Gluten Free
      • Organic
    • Going Green
      • Living
      • Entertainment
      • Fashion
      • Health and Beauty
      • Holidays
      • Home and Garden
      • Travel
    • Sharing
      • Charity
      • Gift Giving
    • Shopping
      • Couponing
      • Free Stuff
      • Groceries
      • Rebates
      • Rewards
  • Deals
  • Coupon Codes
    • $ Off
    • % Off
    • Free Shipping

31 Day Budget (Day 1): Getting Organized

January 1, 2015 at 1:57 pm 2 Comments  

31 Days to a Better Budget

Getting Organized

Each day of the series offers new tips, ideas and a challenge to start the year with a solid financial plan.


pile of billsThe first thing we need to do is start organizing our finances. Gather your receipts, bills, pay stubs, insurance policies, bank statements—if it’s got a number on it, related to your personal finances, you’re going to need it to work through the budget process. If you have selected paperless billing, you can either print the most recent statement or simply bookmark each website.

In a perfect world, you already keep your paperwork in order so today’s step will be incredibly easy. In reality, your papers are probably in a bit of disarray (or, let’s face it, complete chaos throughout your home) so this could take much of your day. However, you don’t need to worry about doing anything with it for now—just track it all down to be ready for the next step.

You will need to refer to this paperwork for the next several days, as you create a budget plan. Prepare a work space to use for the next 31 days. Ideally, you should have a dedicated place to manage household finances. Clean off a desk, if you have it, or find a box to keep everything together so you can work with the space you have.

That’s it—I told you we were going through this step by step. The plan is to build a simple budget, tackle just a little each day and work your way up to solid financial footing. When you’ve finished today’s challenge, leave us a comment, shout it out on Facebook or use the #31DayBudget hashtag on Twitter—I’d love to share in your success!


I’m not a financial planner or a budget expert. I’ll just be walking you through the steps I take each time my budget needs an adjustment. In fact, I’ll be participating myself!

Filed Under: Budgeting Tagged With: 31 Day Budget

About Heather Sokol

Heather Sokol is the founder of Inexpensively. She has been married to Spencer for many, many years. Together, they have five kids, fourteen pets, seven fish, and a web development company. What they lack is sanity.

More from Inexpensively

  • Syndicated ContentGet Organized in 2012: 7 Steps to a Better Budget
  • BudgetingNew Year, New Finances: 31 Days to a Better Budget
  • 31 Day Budget (Day 3): Plugging in the Numbers
  • 31 Day Budget (Day 5): Tracking Expenses

Comments

  1. Caitlin says

    July 5, 2017 at 11:32 am

    I ready to get started today!:)

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. 31 Day Budget (Day 3): Plugging in the Numbers | Inexpensively Frugal Blog Network says:
    January 5, 2011 at 8:32 am

    […] the process to make it easier to deal with (both literally and figuratively). Now that you have organized paperwork & sorted bills, it’s time to start tackling the numbers. Whether you use budgeting […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Copyright © 2023 Inexpensively · Theme by Studio 27

Copyright © 2023 · Inexpensively on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in