How to Spring Clean Your Financial House

Go paperless for recurring bills and monthly financial statements. Also, go through the financial documents you have on hand and shred the old paperwork you don’t need any more. If there are papers you need to keep, make digital versions by scanning them. Not sure what you need to keep? Consult your financial professional to make the decision.

Pro Tip: Got a lot of paper? Let technology help you out! Apps can help you digitize and organize your paper records. Also, visit optoutprescreen.com to stop getting irritating mail solicitations, like credit card applications and loan pre-approvals.

Review ALL of your subscriptions and cancel any you no longer use or need. That includes subscriptions for streaming services, software, magazines and newspapers, gaming and even product deliveries.

Pro Tip: Use your credit card and bank statements to figure out all your subscriptions, so you don’t overlook any. Also consider signing up for subscriptions using the same card, so its easier to audit them in the future.

How many bank accounts, retirement accounts, and brokerage accounts do you have? Are they at different financial institutions? The type of account sprawl can get complicated fast. It can also mean paying lots of maintenance fees. Take a careful look at your accounts and try to consolidate them. Look at both reducing the number of accounts you have and consolidating you accounts at fewer institutions.

Pro Tip: Check out account fees and requirements as you decide which ones to keep versus shut down. And don’t forget to look at transfer fees too, especially if you’re moving money around to streamline your accounts. Consider asking a financial professional for advice to avoid unnecessary fees or inconvenient restrictions.

Setup regular transfers to a designated savings account. Choose a comfortable amount you can stick with. If you don’t know how much to set aside, start with a number you know you can commit to. And if you’re already doing this, check you automatic transfers and consider whether now’s a good time to adjust or increase them.

Pro Tip: If your savings account is already pretty healthy, reroute your automatic deposits into a retirement account, college fund, or investment account. Also, consider earmarking chunks of cash you get, like annual tax refunds, for savings too.

Create backups of all your important financial documents and account information. That means backing up digital files on another hard drive and back up your backups by storing them in a the cloud.

Pro Tip: Create a “master” file as a “key” to explain how your backups are organized and where to find what information. You can also organize financial access passwords with a secure password manager. This reorganization can help you out with your next financial spring cleaning. This can also give you a head start on estate planning, allowing an estate executor to access all of your digital assets and information.

How are you doing on your financial goals, big and small? What progress have you made and where are you falling short? Reviewing where you’re at, how far you’ve come, and where you want to be can help you figure out when and how to adjust course, so you stay on track.

Pro Tip: Turn this step into a conversation so you can get feedback and a fresh perspective. Talking about your bigger financial goals can motivate you to stick with them.

Have you already done some financial spring cleaning this year?

What’s first on your list (or next)?

The truth is, no matter how old you are or how much money you have, financial clutter can pile up pretty fast for any of us.

Bills, account statements, tax records, policy documents, business agreements, and more — our financial lives come with quite a paper trail.

That can overwhelm any of us.

In fact, it can stress us out and frustrate us almost constantly, especially if we’re wasting time trying to sort out the basics.

And if we ignore all that financial clutter, instead of managing it, we can easily slide into procrastination mode.

When we do, impulsive decisions are more likely to follow.2

All of that can make it harder to look past the clutter and focus on what’s really important.

So, how can you keep it all in check?

Start with some simple spring cleaning in your financial house. Making that scheduled “spring cleaning” a habit can be even better.

It also helps to keep yourself accountable by checking in with someone you trust.