I know, it's been a terribly long time since my last blog entry. But, BMDR (Both My Dear Readers), I'm making it up to you. I have pictures!
Money management. If you have ADD, it's a given that typically, you will be scared out of your wits by money management. But I had no earthly idea how much emotional baggage was holding me back from getting this area of my life under control.
Since being diagnosed and treated for ADD, my house is neater, cleaner, and more organized. I'm getting better and better at keeping up with friends and family. When I worked outside the home, I was more productive at my job. Everything was easier for me to get a handle on, once I was diagnosed and adequately treated. Except. . .money management.
I'm a great budgeter. We can live on any income we have, so long as I know what it is in advance. I can figure out our net pay, our giving and savings, and calculate discretionary and nondiscretionary spending faster than you can say "boo." But for some reason, I couldn't get the bills paid, no matter how hard I tried. I've set up systems, and my systems failed, one by one. I instituted overdraft protection, but I would just drain my savings and then continue to rack up overdraft charges. I could pay attention to my checking account for exactly two weeks before I would make a math error, or forget to record a check or payment, and things were bouncing again.
In October, we decided I would leave my half-time job to homeschool our children full time, meaning a cut in our net pay. It was time to get serious. There could be no more frittering away our money with bank fees, overdraft charges, and late payment fees. We just no longer have any to spare. We needed a system, and more than that, we needed a system that will work. We believed the key to that working system would be simplicity. Mike had to be able to do it just as easily as I. In fact, it would be good if the system were so simple and self-evident, any stranger could walk into our house and figure out how to pay the bills.
Presenting, pictures of our system! Here is our bill-paying binder.
The first sleeve has unpaid bills.
The second sleeve has pens, the checkbook, stamps, and envelopes.
Then comes our bill calendar for 2008, which is pre-printed with the due dates of regular payments that do not get mailed to us, such as the car payment (for which we have a coupon book) or our charitable giving.
Finally, we have pages of address labels for regular payees who do not send us handy-dandy return envelopes,
and return address labels.
Let's start at the mailbox, shall we? Mail comes, and it stays in the mailbox until someone has two minutes to sort it. Under no circumstances may anyone bring in mail and leave it lying on a table or sofa. If you can't put it away, leave it alone until you can.
Mail comes in, is opened, and sorted. Garbage and junk mail get shredded. Magazines and catalogs go to their basket (and old issues are purged). Information that will need to be kept, like insurance policies, are filed. And most importantly, bills get entered on their due date, on the bill paying calendar in the binder, and then filed in that handy-dandy plastic sleeve.
Twice a month my husband gets paid, and bills must be paid. It does not take very long to pull out the bill binder, pay all the bills between now and the next payday, record the payments in the check register, and put them in the mailbox. I have one day a week where I'm scheduled to push paper in the form of lesson planning for the kids, typing, organizing, and bill paying if necessary. But if I haven't done it on that regular day, and payday comes, that's our deadline. Someone's sitting down to pay bills on payday, and no later. (Rules, people. Hard-and-fast rules that everyone agrees to and that cannot under any circumstance be broken. Being a hard-ass is key to the success of any system.)
How do we keep from bouncing checks? We no longer use our checking account for anything save paying the semimonthly bills. The checkbook and the debit cards live in the binder. They do not hang out in our wallets or in our pockets, ever. We use folding cash or credit cards for the day-to-day spending. The only time the checkbook or debit card gets used is payday. We sit down on payday and empty out the checking account, relegating said money to our giving, our savings account, any cash we will need in the next couple weeks, and credit card payments. Then, we put it away until the next payday. This, in my opinion, based on my vast experience living with me, is the only way to prevent me from bouncing checks and overdrawing a checking account. Overdraft protection doesn't help. Checking the account daily can't be sustained despite my best intentions. The only way is this way: we simply do not use the account day-to-day.
Once the bills are paid, they go here.
Pretty, yes? They go in the
red, because this is where our liabilities live. Seeing as how our ADD forces us to keep it simple enough to maintain it, there aren't very many files here. There are files marked "paid bills" with quarterly dates. Jan-Mar 2008. Apr-Jun 2008. You get the idea. Easy enough to drop the wad of stubs from the paid bills in the correct red folder and be finished with the filing.
Notice, no drawer, no lid, no cover. Another ADD trick - don't cover it up or it'll never get used. We store our clothes out in open shelving as well - if we have to open a drawer we'll give up and just throw the pile of clean clothes on the floor. Same concept with the filing. Keep it simple!
Just in case you are interested, the rest of the colors are:
Purple is information (for example, take out menus);
red is, as previously mentioned, liabilities (bills, credit cards, student loans);
green is money (checking and savings accounts);
blue is household (receipts for major purchases, insurance info, mortgage, etc.);
yellow is coupons, as I'm such a die-hard couponer I need that much organization to keep them all straight.
Oh, the emotional toll, though. I knew we needed a system, I knew it was important, but I had no clue how difficult it would be for me to force myself to follow the system. Every morning when the mail comes, it's a battle within myself to get it and open it. After an entire adult life messing up your money, mail usually contains bad news. There are bills you forgot about, collection notices, bills you can't pay because you've gotten so behind, and all manner of surprises. I have been thoroughly conditioned to be afraid of the mail, and to want to stick my head in the sand.
Add to that the self-loathing I didn't know I'd accumulated over all those years I thought the effects of my undiagnosed disease was a character flaw, and I'm doomed from the start! No wonder I've been unable to stick to any system in the past!
Well, I'm happy to report that my husband and I have set up this system and have been keeping each other accountable for following it. Sometimes he gets the mail, sometimes I do, but we always follow our system for filing away bills that arrive. And we've sat down to pay the bills, on time, and it didn't kill me. It hurt a little bit, but I really did live to tell the tale. I felt the fear and did it anyway!
So far, it's working. So I'm blogging, in case one of BMDRs have ADD as well and would like to plagiarize my system for personal finance. Steal it all you like, if it'll work for you.
Comments (1)
ok...that is a great system! I'll have to steal some of your ideas when I get back home and tackle our budget!!!
merry christmas!