Yesterday Daniel and I sat down and did our year-end financial review. I wish I could say this was our annual year-end financial review, but I think this was the first time we've gone through this process together. I'm normally the one who pays all the bills, works on the budget software, keeps an eye on investment stuff, etc, but we realized that- even though it's not a bad system for us- it would be very bad if something happened to me and Daniel was totally clueless about how/when to pay the bills and what some of our automatic withdrawals are.
First we went through all our files and shredded anything that didn't need to be kept and pulled out any 2010 tax documents to go in the 2010 tax document folder. Using our file folders as guide, I made a list of all our regular expenses and how they are paid (eg. Car insurance through Progressive 2x per year by check. Electric bill through MyCheckFree.com) and a separate list of all the log-ins and passwords for all the accounts, which we hid in locations we are *pretty sure* we won't forget. We checked balances of all our accounts online and discussed any changes we wanted to make over the next year.
And it only took about 2.5 hours (which also includes time spent going through a box of equipment manuals and throwing away the ones for items we no longer own). So my point- other than to get to post a picture of a sheep made of shredded paper- is to encourage all of you to do the same. I'd say we have about the same or possibly more financial paperwork than your average 20-somethings, and 2.5 hours per year is a great investment in knowing where you (or your family) is at financially. However, it's one of those things that everyone (including us) dreads doing for some reason. It's not that bad! Take part of a cold/rainy Sunday afternoon before tax time and just do it!
Workout:
Treadmill track workout #1 again. Hoping the nasty weather keeps the undergrads from being back in force at the gym this morning.
