How To Simplify Your Financial Life

Modern lifestyle has already made our life messy by pulling us in all directions. We are all stressed out by our busy schedules and in between this we have clutter in our finances as well. Many of us have more than one account and it becomes really difficult to manage them. Some of the people are unaware of the systematic methods of paying the bills and managing financial transactions without creating much fuss. This also makes them fall prey to breaching. However, by making minor changes you can avoid all this and simplify your financial life. So, here are a few ways that can help you in this task.

• Consolidate your accounts- You might have your retirement account in one place and checking account in another. You may also be having mortgage, insurance products and emergency savings. It is not easy to manage the accounts scattered all over the places. So, it is better to consolidate them in one or two places. Choose only one bank for savings as well as credit. You must also pick one company for all your insurance requirements. Even a certified financial planner will also advise you the same. In this way, you will have a very few accounts to handle. At the same time, you will get the best interest rates, flexible terms for your loans and several other benefits.

• Try to avoid paperwork as much as possible– In this world of the internet and smartphones, everything can be done online and financial transactions are not an exception. Most of the financial institutions provide paperless statements. So, sign up for the same. You can get almost all the statements online except for a few important documents. Some of the people feel it better to have paper statements, some of them want to get them in order to make it easier to review the charges, remember to pay the bills and have a check on various fees. If you are one of them, you must note that, all this can be done without those papers. You can simply save all your bills and statements in one of the folders of your laptop and see them whenever you wish.

• Try to pay cash wherever possible– As per the Certified Financial Planner, cash payments, pay a vital role in simplifying your finances. If you are going to do cash payment, it prevents you from making impulsive purchases. It also stops you from overspending. This means that, you don’t rack up unwanted debt in the form of credit card bills and also don’t gather unnecessary things at home by shopping recklessly. Cash payments also reduce the stress of daily money management activities as you don’t have to keep on reviewing statements of your credit card.

• Make the things automatic– If you are still not getting your salary deposited automatically, sign up for it at the earliest. It will really be beneficial for you. You can also automate the system for paying various bills and free up yourself from the stress of paying those bills on time. You can make a request for delivering your bills electronically and pay the due amount automatically within the given time to your biller and bank respectively. However, this depends upon whether your billers as well as bank offer this facility or not. You can even set up recurring payments for this purpose.
• Review your bills and statements– You must review all your bills as well as statements. It is important to note that, there is always a possibility of mistakes in the bills and statements. You must go through the paystub carefully and understand every deduction. This action is crucial especially when you start off with a new job. Payroll department of the organization in which you are working can also commit mistakes. If you do such review, it becomes easy to correct them at the initial level as things becomes complex as the time passes. When you automate your bill payment, don’t forget to check the bills every month. This is necessary to see if there are any irrelevant charges or some other charges imposed. This review will take only half an hour per month, but will help you spot the issues quickly and solve them as soon as possible.

             These are the ways you must use for making your finances easy. You will surely be stress-free and everything will be managed perfectly.