Folders Folders and More Folders

If you are a person who goes by "everything has it's place" then this part will be fairly easy for you. D and I went through tons of options for how we wanted to organize our income, debt, budget and payment plans/options. We wanted to make sure we used something that would be effective and that we could easily keep track of. I started with a folder from my work. It has a few spots to put in different papers. I made a space for:

• a yearly check off on what was paid each month (to make sure we didn't forget to pay something)
• a list of our debt (we put it in our snowball order, smallest amount to largest)
• a monthly budget that displayed all of our expenses, the total of those expenses vs. our incoming money
• a calendar with the bills written out on the day (I like to see things written out this way, this may be something you can forgo if the yearly check off is enough, especially if it is written in date order)
• a list of our payment plan, the snowball debt payments that would be made to each debtor and the approximate payoff date, I love playing with numbers on excel and made an excel spread sheet. I will put up an example of one in a future post, this helps to keep me on track with my budget and to keep my goals in site!
• the last section is extra papers, in case something gets messed up or I need to rewrite something due to a mistake or something having changed

This is what works for us, and as always take as long as you need to figure out what works for you. If you don't find something that works, you are less likely to use it! There are tons of options for financial planners out on the internet, and I will be working on my own to hopefully provide to you all shortly! but in the meantime make one of your own, or find something by a quick google search!