Marcus Aurelius Antoninus became emperor of Rome at the ate of 14 and was only emperor for four short years. Anyone who has spent any time with teenage boys could have told you that to give him that much power at that young of age would result in debauchery. He was so bad in fact that he disgusted the hedonistic Roman people. And that’s saying something.
During one of his infamous parties, he was said to have arranged for the ceiling panels to be pulled aside and thousands of rose petals dropped on his guests. There were so many rose petals that some of them were suffocated.
A single rose petal weighs in at just around 1/16 of an ounce. Yet, enough of them on top of you can crush you.
And this is where we get into our financial tip for the day:
A single sheet of paper weighs less than 1/200 of a pound and yet enough paper can crush you…Financially.
If you are ever going to get control of your day-to-day spending, your monthly budget, or your lifetime of financial investment; you have to get control of your paper!!! You must get organized.
This is probably the hardest of the financial tips for me to give because it is the one that I struggle with the most. I am a cluttered person. Anyone who has seen my desk can tell it is true. When my wife and I decided to take control and go debt free, we began sorting through our old paperwork. Months worth of unopened mail was placed in a plastic bin and we opened them one item at a time. We found lots of bills that we had paid, but just left the paperwork on the counter. We found sales , ads, and junk mail that should have been thrown away long ago. We found invitations to a party we missed. Worst of all, we found two checks that had been sent to us as refunds. Both were long since expired and of no further use. Our disorderly conduct had cost us money.
To control your budget and get out of debt, you must open your mail every day (or at least several times a week). Prioritize your bills by date and throw out the trash. In fact, I sort my mail over the trash so I don’t set anything down that we don’t need.
Place the bills in a tickler system so that you can pay them in order when your paycheck comes in.
Then, you need a filing system. Label everything. When you pay the bill, staple the receipt to the bill and place it in a file folder labeled for those items. If you are paying off collections, demand a payoff letter from them and then, when you pay it off, keep a copy of the checks you used so you can prove it later.
If your personality type is not one for doing this sort of tedium, you are going to hate it. But, I can promise you that it will save you hundreds and even thousands of dollars over your life time and also cut your stress when it comes time to purchase a home, pay taxes, or deal with collectors who have already been paid.
Like those little rose petals, out of control paperwork will smother you. Control your paperwork and it won’t crush you.
Disclaimer: I am not a trained financial advisor, I just play one on this blog. Seriously. Get good financial advice in life. My information comes primarily from personal experience, working in consumer lending in the banking industry, and watching friends, family, and parishioners struggle. But, much of this is common sense, most people just don't use their common sense when it comes to financial matters.
P.S. I apologize for the break in this series. I was completing homework for school. Talk about papers suffocating you.
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