Ok officially the challenges are going to run Sunday to Sunday. We'll see how long I can do this. Like I said I could get halfway through March and decide its a complete waste of my time. Or I could love making myself do things just so I can write about them every week. I'm a little over-eager though and short a blog post today so we'll start a day early.
This week's challenge is: get control of your finances. Wow nothing like starting hard! No... I should break this down... this is going to go over a few weeks. This week specifically, I want you to go through those old receipts, check your bank statements, balance your checkbook. This is all building up to next week's challenge....
I'll admit I work at a Financial Institution (FI) writing educational articles, making marketing promos, etc. I have a budget and I save but I am not good at going through all those receipts. They'll sit in a pile for weeks before I open them. Today in point, I was going through a Macy's bill (I always just pay it off so I never read that junk that comes with it)... BIG MISTAKE. If I read their change in terms correctly, they're charging me interest now from the date of purchase (currently they were charging interest only if you didn't pay it all off). I'm getting ready to get in the shower so I can go pay my bill off and cancel the card. By not reading my bill, I never had a clue. So that's my first challenge. Let's take this week to get things in order so we can hit the ground running with the next challenges.
I don't want to tackle my pile of receipts either but my plan is to go through them every day, one at a time. If I do three or four a day by next Sunday I'm golden.
Now, I for one do balance my checkbook on a regularly basis but if you aren't doing it and you aren't looking at your statements you could be in trouble. If you account was ever stolen you only have a set amount of time to notify your FI and get your money back. Otherwise you could be liable for everything. Not to mention, how can you ever know what you have if you don't take two seconds to add everything up.
So, lets get this thing going and figure out where our money is so by week two we can plot where it's going in 2010.
OMG! I totally need to get my finances in order, but I'm not really seeing this as a weekly challenge, more of a don't ever use your charge card unless it's an emergency, and I'm sorry, but OMG, I have to have this purse, is not an emergency! FYI, I'm talking to myself here, not you! :) But this was a good one to motivate me!!
ReplyDeleteHaha It'll take me a week to go through my receipts. I put it off, I glance at my statement, make sure no one has stolen my credit card, and then I shove everything into a basket to deal with later. So this is going to be my later.
ReplyDeleteI was pretty good today, I only bought one thing so far (not including lunch) and it was actually a shelf for under my sink so I can organize all my make-up better.
I might actually get to your 30x30 challenge today. I'm planning on going to Am. Fam. before they close.