How Becoming More Organized Can Change Your Financial Life

I spend my life helping people get more organized and I love it. When someone is feeling overwhelmed with their clutter and the massive amount of stuff that they have, the improvements to their lives that happen after getting organized is tangible. There is just something about that feeling of less stuff, less stress, and less on your plate that makes you breathe a sigh of relief and relax a bit for a change. It’s not widely known though, exactly how much becoming more organized can change your life. Today we are going to talk specifically about how becoming more organized can change your financial life.

The truth is, becoming organized is a choice. Making a conscious effort to change this part of your life will change other parts of your life for the better as well. This includes your financial life. How you ask? Well, let’s talk a little bit about that, shall we?

How Becoming More Organized Can Change Your Financial Life

Becoming More Organized Will Help You Keep Your Bills in Order

Have you read my post on mail organization? Learning the proper way to keep your mail organized is the first step in strengthening your financial life. Without keeping your mail and bills organized, you can easily overlook paying one or more of them. Not paying even a single bill can have a seriously negative impact on your financial life. When you follow my tips on mail organization, and you learn to keep your mail and bills in order, you are less likely to miss something important.

How can overlooking your bills and forgetting to pay them affect your financial life? Skipping out on these payments can affect you in several ways:

Late payments mean late fees that you wouldn’t otherwise have to pay.
Late payments can mean negative marks on your credit, which means you are less likely to get approved for credit. In the event that you do get approved, your interest rates will likely be higher, which costs you more in the long run.

If you are following the tips that I lay out in that mail organization post, then let me further share here some of my favorite tools that I use specifically for organizing my bills and my financial life.

Yearly Planner – A planner like this can help you keep track of due dates and things that you need to do. You can use your phone for this if you would like, but many people prefer to put pen to paper.
File Cabinet – Since we are talking about household organization, I think that a smaller file cabinet is sufficient to keep your bills and financial documents in order. If you feel you might like something even smaller than this or perhaps portable, then I love this one as well.
Expanding File and Carrier – Expandable files like this are great for keeping certain files together inside or outside of the cabinet, while also being able to separate your paperwork by category. These are also great for organizing owner’s manuals, warranty paperwork, and important papers ie: passports and birth and marriage certificates.
Scanner – A scanner like this is great for scanning receipts or any paper into your computer. Receipts are especially difficult to store, so this is a great option to keep them more organized. This particular one is battery operated and portable, which is a double plus.

Becoming More Organized Can Increase Your Productivity

Becoming more organized often increases your productivity. By having less stress, in addition to less physical and mental mind clutter you are able to concentrate on the matter at hand, hence you are able to be more productive. When you are more productive, you have the opportunity to earn more money.

Simply: when you are more organized, you have less “stuff” taking time away from your productive hours.

Additionally, becoming more organized often means that you will develop better time management skills, which of course, will increase your productivity as well.

Becoming More Organized Prevents You from Buying Things You Already Own

When your household is filled with clutter, it is hard to know what you have and where everything is. This makes it very easy to overspend on items you don’t need. The culprit is you going to find something, you can’t find it, then you go buy it again, only to find at a late date that you already had it. So yes, there is often wasted money with disorganization.

Becoming More Organized Opens You Up to New Opportunities

When you focus on becoming more organized, you will find that a clearer mind, leads to increased creativity.

With increased creativity comes new opportunities. This may mean you finally get up the motivation and creativity to start that new business or side hustle that you have been thinking about.

In business, as in our daily lives, the ability to adapt to situations rapidly and be flexible is valuable. When you are organized and have things in priority order, you can react more quickly and come up with more creative solutions.

Becoming More Organized Means That You Will Likely Come Across Some Items You Want To Sell

I see this time and time again. When people make the decision to become more organized, they often find a lot of things that they no longer use, or forgot they even had, and that they can sell. I know people who have decluttered and found themselves making $500-$1000 on these items by selling them on Poshmark (use my code DEB19 at sign up and receive a $10 credit to your account), eBay, or FB Marketplace. What could you do with that much extra money?

Becoming More Organized Will Reduce Your Stress Levels

Having more organization and less clutter in your life brings you reduced stress levels. Being organized affords you a clearer mind and a better mindset all around. When stress levels are high, you are less likely to focus on some of the most important things in your life, like your family, your attitude, and often your budget. I know for me, being unorganized just makes me feel out of sorts. For example, when I’m feeling stressed, I might snap at a loved one, feel cranky or throw caution to the wind and splurge on something unexpected. It’s things like this that can easily affect your financial life.

Becoming More Organized Helps with Setting and Achieving Goals

Being organized makes you more efficient, which helps you move toward achieving your goals. If you have an organizational system in your life, it is easier to keep track of your accomplishments and keep your goals at the top of your mind.

Additionally, becoming more organized allows you to have more energy to work toward your goals. That’s because when you are organized your time isn’t wasted searching through things, your time is spent working toward reaching those goals.

Becoming More Organized Can Give You a Break From the Constant Chaos That Leads to Financial Ruin

With disorganization comes chaos. Very few people can thrive in chaos, and this is especially true when it comes to finances. In almost every single article written about the habits of successful people, you will find being organized on that list. It truly is that important.

At the opposite end of that I can say that I know several people who struggle with their finances, those same people are often also the ones that struggle with organization. This doesn’t have to be a life-long curse. Your organizational skills and finances both can improve at any time. Are you ready to make the change?