There May Be Financial Merit in Making Your Bed

 

Who would think that making your bed has anything to do with improving your life? Analyzing this behavior never occurred to me as I believed people always made their beds as part of their daily routine.  Apparently, there’s more to this ritual than I was led to believe.  According to Jennifer Wasylenko, she spells out the five reasons for making your bed.

1.    It gives you a feeling of accomplishment.

2.    It creates a positive state of mind as you go to bed.

3.    It lowers your stress.

4.    It prevents embarrassment.

5.    It leads to other good habits.

I appreciate the last point which drives home the fact that this daily ritual leads to other good habits. Jennifer says, “Once you get in the habit of making your bed, you’ll crave a little more organization because you will appreciate how it makes you feel.”   

If this ritual could lead to the development of organizing and maintaining financial records, then I would encourage everyone to start making their beds.   Having an orderly record-keeping system is important.  If you are prone to not knowing where your important “stuff” is stored and would like to develop an efficient system, now’s the time to start.      

It’s a brand new month closing in on a brand new year. If you are willing, a new year can bring about the implementation of new habits or resolutions.

Plenty of resources can be found on the Internet about organizing your financial documents.  Most people are familiar with “For Dummies” books, created to teach and simplify our lives.  Here’s an article from their series, How to Organize Your Financial Records.  Use the information to design an effective process for yourself.  Generally your incoming financial mail is mostly bills, bank/investment statements, contracts, and important tax filing documents.  The use of tools such as filing cabinets with file folders, binders with protective pages to hold receipts, and a basket for bills-to-pay will manage the flow of documents passing through your hands in route to their final destiny.    

Opportunities are now available to receive and retrieve information on-line through electronic bills and statements.   This is a good way to simplify your life.  Learning to electronically save information will reduce the clutter and mounting piles of paper. You can’t lose a phone bill when it’s stored at a service provider’s website.  Even charitable receipts can be emailed.   This new mail delivery brings challenges to create an on-line filing system so documents can be easily retrieved with a couple of mouse clicks.

Perhaps, your call to action may begin with making your bed every morning. Perhaps, this will prepare you to tackle the big project of organizing your financial records. Perhaps, developing one good habit leads to the creation of multiple good habits. 

I am anxious to hear the results of this experiment.  I, for one, cannot leave the house if my bed is not made.  It repeatedly demands, “Make me!” Nothing could be worse than a talking bed even if this irritating voice is only in my head.  If the theories behind making your bed change your financial behavior, please feel free to share.

How Do You Face the Challenge of Raising a Family?

Parents face tremendous financial pressure to raise their families.  No doubt, nothing frustrates parents more than advice from a financial planner telling them, “You need to spend less or earn more”.   Every family with children finds that their cost of living increases as their children grow.  These financial challenges are real. Discovering a one-size-fits-all solution is not easy.

Facing the Reality of Real Challenges

Groceries. Next to shelter and transportation, groceries rank  among the top monthly expenses.  With the cost of groceries on the rise, meal planning is important to the overall strategy of managing money.  Becoming creative meal planners and implementing some of the proven strategies listed here from My Money Coach could reduce your grocery bill.  One of many lessons I learned from Suze Orman was about wasting food.  Suze suggested taking a five-dollar bill, ripping it in half, and throwing it in the garbage.  She explained doing this is exactly the same thing you do with food.  When you buy too much food which then spoils or when you cook too much and neglect to freeze it, you throw it into the garbage.  You are throwing away money.  For me, this was a reality check which I am asking you to do.  Look at how you manage your food costs.   

Extracurricular Activities. Beyond the everyday needs of food and shelter, parents are challenged with an added expense, their children's extracurricular activities. The enrollment fees for the activities are only part of the total cost.  Living in rural Saskatchewan means driving to another town or city for children to play hockey, participate in gymnastics, or take music lessons.  Dance or sporting competitions mean further commutes, which includes not only gas money but hotel and meal expenses.  Realistically, how much can you afford to pay? The Government of Canada offers some support to help families who enroll their children in fitness activities but how can the maximum fitness tax credit of $300 per child stretch to cover the real cost? Limiting the number of high-cost activities might be a solution. Looking at other low-cost activities offered through school programs may still allow children to be active.  

Services.  Another challenge is managing all the bills.  Never before has the cost of services been so expensive.  The cost has increased along with the number of services people use. Think about it:  cell phone, satellite, internet and security systems are taking their share of your income. The hardest, if not impossible, part  is giving-up something that you have come to cherish as convenient or entertaining for your children and you. Perhaps the service is even described as essential.  Deciding what you can live without or at the very least reducing the cost of the service package may free some much-needed cash required elsewhere.      

How are you coping?  What have you had to reduce or eliminate so money was free for other goals and dreams?  What have you had to do to rise to the challenge of raising a family?  Many of us face the same challenges.  We can learn from each other.  The information and advice a financial planner shares is up to you to accept or discard.