My Organized Chaos: Taxes are over- prepare for next year!

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Taxes are over- prepare for next year!

Hey all! Hope you are having fun spending those awesome tax returns! I shot high this year and spent it towards a new house :)   Not saying you have to spend it on something crazy-paying off bills or loans can be a HUGE stress relief!

When you were preparing your taxes were you organized or did you feel a little chaotic and had to dig through pounds of paper to find those last little receipts? Maybe it's time to look towards next year and file your papers in a way that makes it simple to start that tax return!

I recently re-did my filing system to match what I needed now. It's not the prettiest of systems (yet!) but it's functional just the same.

 
What I did was organize my files into sections-
1. Re-occurring bills (such as water, electricity, etc)
2. Receipts
3. Investments (such as 401k, stocks, etc)
4. Insurance (Dental, medical, life, etc)
5. Wyatt (yes my dog has a file- for shot records)
6. Medical bills/bank statements/taxes/etc (a catch all misc)

This helps me when I am filing all my paperwork to access every type of folder quickly and easily. The whole project took me about an hour (moving can jumble paperwork!) I am loving the outcome so far!

I also went the extra step and organized the papers inside the folders into years or types of papers, whatever made the most sense. This makes it easy for tax return time. You can easily pull out the last years information if need be and file it away nice and organized.


As far as receipts go- it's better to air of the side of caution and keep them. Rather than have a shoe box full of them- file them in their own folder. I typically keep receipts for bigger ticket items, items that have a warranty, repairs, donations, etc. This is also nice for when stores won't take back items without a receipt.

Start looking at your files and figure out the best system for you! If you don't have a way to file papers yet- try it out! It gets rid of a lot of stress and time to just file a few papers away each month. If you don't have a filing cabinet you can always use one of these file boxes from Office Depot or Staples.  I prefer using the plastic boxes to protect my files instead of the cardboard boxes- plus they last a lot longer!

Lastly, I will leave you with a pretty flower picture, just because! :)



2 comments :

  1. I will be using this!! I'm hopeless in this area and just need a push... or a forceful shove in the right direction! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. You know I'm good at pushing :) Glad I can help in any way! Love you!

    ReplyDelete