Welcome to 31 Days to an Organized Life & Business! For the month of October I will be a participant in The Nester’s 31 days Writing Challenge. Taking some of my own advice and taking you along on my journey to a life reset. I’ll be sharing (and practicing) some tips on everything from bookkeeping, shopping, managing kids, intentional parenting, work from home mom syndrome, work/life balance, spiritual reset and more. Not because I am the expert in these fields, but because they have worked for me in the past, and I so badly need them to work again for me now.
When I say I need this reset I’m not even kidding. When I say I’ll be writing about it, I don’t mean, I’m going to talk about past advice or something that worked once for me 3 years ago. I mean I’m going to hit publish on this blog post, and then go and do what I am writing about today. That is all I can commit to for today. Which means, if you can relate to any of this, I invite you along on this 31 day journey. Watch me triumph or fail, but I’ll be here daily to give you updates. I’d love if you joined me, and keep me posted on your progress as well. There’s hope and support in community here.
If you missed Day 1, or would like to catch up on any other day, click the link on the right hand side or right here.
Be sure to also follow along on Instagram as I post updates throughout the day. #31daystoreset @Angelsea Urban
Thanks for visiting!
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Wow. Day 15. And what a journey it has been so far.
When I set out to join the 31 days of writing project, and chose “31 Days to an Organized Life & Business” I was honestly worried I wouldn’t have enough to write about. As it turns out, my personal reasons for participating in the project far outweighed just stretching my writing muscles. So OF COURSE I have plenty to write about, because all along this was my own journey to reset my life. And Lord knows there is plenty to do in 31 days. Maybe I should have called it 31 days to a Total Life Reset, but then again no one would google that.
So if you are just joining us… here’s a recap of stuff we have tackled so far:
Day 2: Writing a Family Mission Statement
Day 3: Making time for Devotionals
Day 4: Family Responsibility Chart
Day 7: 5 Ways to Stay productive (even when the sky is falling)
Day 8: Blogs you should be reading
Day 10: The REAL truth about Work/Life Balance
Day 11: no post – because I was practicing work/life balance
Day 12: no post – because I was practicing work/life balance
Day 13: no post – because I was practicing work/life balance
Day 14: Grace for today, and the forgetful blogger
Welcome to day 15: Easy Personal Financial Management
So if you have been here a little while you know I like to operate on a budget. Not because I am so regimented that I need to box myself in, but that I find it way easier to live life in the world of currency when I have already spent what I needed to on paper FIRST.
My problem with any of those monthly budgeting systems is just that: monthly. And life doesn’t operate on monthly. Life operates on a rolling basis. With a monthly budget, some months have 4 weeks, some 5. Some have 2 pay periods, some 3, and if you are self employed and payments are irregular, planning a “monthly” anything seems like a joke.
So here’s a piece of information that might shock everyone: My husband actually handles all of our household finances.
Whaaaaat? But I thought you were an accountant. I thought you were the business guru who did all things money and with the planning and what not? What would you let your husband handle that?
And in case you are wondering, yes, those are real actual statements I have heard in real life.
First – I don’t “let” my husband “handle” that. We are a team and we both contribute to our household management. Yes, I might be the natural candidate for financial management because it comes naturally to me, but we learned over the years that managing our household finances is a task that just works better for him, merely because he has the time and resources to manage it more effectively than I do. He has a desk job in a corporate environment with internet access on his lunch break Monday – Friday so it’s just easier for him pay and manage bills online.
Now, it’s more than just click and pay…. as he learned the first month he took over our bills. Because he was like – “Oh… mortgage is due on the 1st so I’ll go ahead a get that out of the way” and then he was scratching his head as to how the heck the other bills would be paid when our account just got wiped out.
So… enter the Easy Personal Financial Management System we came up with for him to be able to plan and deploy payments based on income and deposits.
Since “monthly” doesn’t work, I created this rolling spreadsheet that allows us to see the entire year (or forever if I program it far enough).
I input the the income in the designated spots and then instead of listing how much the monthly expense is, I apply it to the spot on the date it will be paid. Then the spreadsheet automatically calculates how much money we will have left over at the end of the pay period. If income is sporadic, we just decide on the draw amount that will come out of the business account as salary and apply that.
Just by plugging in numbers here and there – I can see that come Christmas time, we might come up short – so we can have time to plan for that. Or when a birthday comes up – we can pad the budget in that area to prepare. On the flip side, if we have an unexpected savings on a bill that is less than what we thought, or we earn more than we thought, we can make a simple adjustment and see now that Christmas is taken care of, even though it’s 3 months away.
So, yes, my husband handles the bills because we use this system. We both know exactly what is happening with our budget at any time. He simply deploys payments when necessary via online banking. If he starts to see red, he calls me and we figure it out.
So I created this system in Microsoft Excel, but in order for us both to have access to it, I uploaded it to Google Docs. It now works on the fly as a make shift custom mobile app! So if hubby calls with a question from work, I can easily log in and we can both be looking at the same thing to discuss. Easy peasy!
Because not everybody loves making excel spreadsheets as much as I do, I added this to the Toolbox so you don’t have to create your own from scratch. And of course for my blog readers, there’s giant discount for sticking with me on this journey. Use the code 31DaysPFEX to get 75% off this item for the next 48 hours!
Thanks for visiting today!
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Be sure to check the blog every day during the Month of October for new content. Or sign up for the VIP Newsletter for important updates.
East Coast Fine Art Lifestyle Family Portrait Photographer Angelsea Urban
Angelsea Urban is a photographer and entrepreneur helping women use their creative gifts to nourish their homes and cultivate their businesses through practical stewardship. Her unique photography work focuses on Redefining the Family Portrait Experience by telling the story of family through personalized foundations while creating a space to strengthen family bonds throughout the experience. As a certified tax professional and seasoned business consultant, Angelsea has helped the careers of photographers, restaurateurs, musicians and general small business owners through teaching, workshops, coaching, and hands on consulting. Her ministry work focuses on fostering creative gifts in women entrepreneurs to prioritize family and discipleship. She has photographed for families, brides, Bravo TV, NFL Films, and more and has been featured on multiple blogs and magazine print for her work in photography and in business. Angelsea teaches and photographs throughout the United States, and resides with her husband of 17 years, their two children, and their barely 3 pound Yorkie near Long Beach Island, New Jersey.
To book your session with Angelsea Urban, please visit www.angelseaurban.com
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