Organizing Your Finances with Alexis Boccanfuso - 139

[00:00:00] Are you tired of feeling overwhelmed by your finances? Let's talk about how you can get organized with your life in your money in today's episode. Welcome to Money Talk with Skyler Fleming, guiding you through the maze of your money. Let's get talking.

[00:00:13] Welcome to today's episode of Money Talk with Skyler Fleming. In today's episode, we're exploring how simplicity can transform your financial life. We'll discuss why people get disorganized with their finances, how simplicity can help, and we'll provide some

[00:00:26] actionable steps to get started. We have insights from experts and real-life tips that you can implement right away with today's guest. The Money Talking Points for today's episode are, what things do I need to organize my finances? Two, what areas can I implement simplicity?

[00:00:42] And three, how can I avoid disorganization in my finances? With the Money Talking Points in mind, let's get talking. Hello everybody, welcome to today's interview on Money Talk with Skyler Fleming. Joining me today, I have Alexis Boken Fuso and I think I managed to say it correctly.

[00:01:06] So go me but awesome. Alexis, would you go and introduce yourself for everyone? Tell them what you do? Sure. So thanks for inviting me to talk money with you today. My name is Alexis Boken Fuso. I'm a certified professional organizer, certified daily money manager,

[00:01:23] and a certified professional coach. And I help my clients meet their financial and strategic goals. And I love talking money, so I'm happy to be speaking with you today. Fantastic. Yeah, this episode idea came out because I'm like, there's people who professionally organize stuff, right?

[00:01:38] Like that exists and I think in our finances are often disorganized or maybe that's an area we don't even think needs to be organized. So I'm excited for this conversation and talk a little bit

[00:01:48] more about organizing our financial lives. But right out the gate, I think we should help people understand how they even end up disorganized or what this organization looks like with their finances, how do people get disorganized with their money? Sure. So some people are never

[00:02:03] organized in the first place. Do you do limited financial literacy or they have limiting beliefs about money? And right now like our current financial lives are so much more complicated than

[00:02:14] they used to be. Think about all the ways you can get a bill right? You can come by email, come by text, they can come in the mail, cash or check or debit credit online. There's so many

[00:02:24] avenues that you can get in, you know, get bills or pay expenses from that people can easily get disorganized, right? So you have to have systems in place to track it all. Yeah, sorry I just had a thought come to mind because I was helping my grandma yesterday

[00:02:40] with some of her bills and going through them to make sure they got paid and I'm like okay where where's your water bill? She's like oh they text that one to me. It's like and then she comes

[00:02:48] like and she's like how do I find my text? She knows how to get to it from notifications, but doesn't know how to get to old text messages. That's crazy and her emails on her computer,

[00:02:58] not on her phone and that she's being texted some bills. So yeah that one hit home recently. Yeah absolutely. I'm glad you brought up your grandmother because that's one of the places two people get disorganized. So let's say you've been organized your whole life with your finances

[00:03:14] but as people age they lose some of that ability whether through illness or maybe their eyesight is poor, their handwriting is poor and it's harder for them to manage their finances. The other thing is that people who are completely financial organized sometimes get disorganized when there's

[00:03:31] a major life event so think like marriage or divorce so there's a lot of reasons why people are disorganized with their finances. Yeah and like you said there's so many ways to pay for things

[00:03:42] there's so many ways to receive payments and receive bills. So there's a lot we have to keep organized. So let's dive down into it again and see how do people get organized? How do they

[00:03:52] even get started? How can let's talk in just in life in general but how does simplicity help people in their life? How can that help? Yeah so simplicity can mean different things to

[00:04:03] different people but for me it means having clear systems in place to manage all of life's many details and that simplicity can reduce anxiety and stress and it can also improve time management. Yeah that makes sense how does that simplicity extend to people when they're thinking about

[00:04:21] their money? How does that help them there? So having this clear systems in place can reduce stress and improve time management so here's a really simple example of a system is sorting out the

[00:04:31] mail the sort out the junk mail before you bring it in the house. It's a very simple system but it makes dealing with the actual mail and bills when you're going to sit down and do them

[00:04:41] a little bit easier. So any system that you can put in place that makes something easier to do is going to reduce stress and anxiety and improve time management. Yeah and I want to even share

[00:04:53] a tip that I've learned recently that helps with that mail idea that you have is informed delivery. I signed up for that with the post office and now like when I come home from work now I'm not worried

[00:05:03] oh did we get any mail because I know it's all junk and yeah when I get the email and I look at and say oh that one's not junk then I can go to the mail for that one thing and immediately

[00:05:12] discard the rest. And that goes to how technology can help with our systems too. What are some few easy steps that someone can take to get organized and to start that organization in their

[00:05:22] financial lives? Okay so someone can always reach out to a financial organizer like me if they're having trouble getting started. In general financial organizing is a lot like organizing anything else in your life. You start by exploring what you have. You review to reduce clutter,

[00:05:38] you develop an implement a system to meet your organizing needs and then you maintain the system. So I'm going to give you a very simple but impactful area that you could start with. So everyone

[00:05:49] has subscriptions and we're all on autopay right? And people get people lose track of them all the times. So this is like what you can do for your subscriptions right? Step one, a value in

[00:06:02] edit right? You have to know what you have. So I would suggest that people review like review the past 12 months of all your statements bank, credit card, Venmo wherever you have payments to look for any subscription you have an autopay then determine which ones you're going

[00:06:19] to keep, decide which ones you can let go of and which ones you're going to keep. So that's step one evaluating that it. Step two would be a sort and contained. So you figure out how you're going to

[00:06:29] manage what you're keeping. So you review your organizing needs right? I put a system in place. So for this example, your organizing needs might be knowing what subscriptions you have

[00:06:42] and how much you pay for them, how often you pay for them and how you pay for them. And that system that you create to meet those needs could be as simple as just creating a spreadsheet

[00:06:51] that lists out all that information. And then step three is review and maintain right? You got to check it out once in a while. And this is where a lot of people get hung up right? You have

[00:07:01] to review and maintain any organizational system that you put in place so that means your system has to have a time component right? So in this example, when do you update the spreadsheet

[00:07:12] and when do you review it? Updating the spreadsheet should take place when you add a subscription or cancel a subscription and then a review should be done at least annually. So you can set a

[00:07:23] recurring appointment reminder in your calendar or you can add it to your task app and that'll ensure that you're actually reviewing and maintaining. Now I know that this is very general right?

[00:07:34] But I know a lot of people get hung up in this area so I hope that your listeners are going to go home today and make some time on their calendar to review their subscriptions and set up a

[00:07:44] system to manage it. So you can take that process, right? That three-step process and you can apply to any area of your financial life so that's like how do you organize your financial paper in your digital records, right? Your statements and your expenses. How do you organize your

[00:07:58] tax document? How do you process the mail and bills? How do you if you do when I do recommend people do like are you keeping the books, right? Are you categorizing your income and expenses?

[00:08:09] Are you doing cash flow and budgeting? How are you tracking your medical bills and insurance claims and then there's afterlife planning as well? And I know I'm being very general, right?

[00:08:18] But one of the things that I do recommend people do is learn your cash flow, right? So that's tracking your money that's coming in as well as your money that's going out including future transactions.

[00:08:31] So if your finances aren't too complicated, you could probably do that in a spreadsheet. If they're more complicated, then you want some type of personal finance software. I like quick in. It's a really great way to keep track of your future bills and also your cash flow.

[00:08:47] Yeah, there's a lot of great software out there that can help if you don't want to dive into building out some expensive spreadsheet and to go back to your subscription idea, one thing I like to

[00:08:57] share in that realm too just to add on to the advice is turn off autopay. You mentioned they're all on autopay. They're all auto renewing for me and my wife we did that recently and this was a tip I

[00:09:08] heard maybe a year ago to turn off autopay and then when the cancel, that's when you're going to figure out if you really need it or not because if you don't use it and it cancels and never

[00:09:17] renews, maybe you never notice which will be kind of crazy. The idea is we're new it for a year or new it for a month, whatever you do. And then go in right away and cancel because they're always

[00:09:26] going to carry out the subscription for whatever you paid for. They're not going to shut off your economy. Turn off the autopay so that it cancels after you're done. Are there any common larger things that people need to consider when organizing their money? Your process is very

[00:09:39] clear it can help in so many areas. What are some more big things that they can do? So what if something happened to tomorrow and you are suddenly incapacitated or worse?

[00:09:49] Like in today's world, it's a bit too real to ignore that question. Yeah, I like to work every day and manage your finances or dismantle your finances. So what I recommend and it goes by a lot

[00:10:00] of different names, some people call it a peace of mind file, some people call it life documents, love drawer, my favorite is the just in case file. It's a document or there are online platforms

[00:10:11] now where you can capture your entire financial life so that a trusted family member or a friend can step in and take over your finances just in case you can't. So I recommend that everyone

[00:10:24] have this no matter how young or old they are. Yeah, that's like different. That's the biggest one that you can do start to get organized because that one's going to have the longest lasting impact.

[00:10:34] Because like you said when you said what happened tomorrow if you got hurt, I thought through it I was like well I have life insurance in place and I know there's a document that will walk my

[00:10:43] life through my spreadsheets and stuff that I've built out that we work off of. So even the podcast host that's been talking about money for two and a half years has progress to make in this area.

[00:10:52] So I imagine a lot of other people do as well, that's a great one to get started. Awesome. So once people are able to get organized, once they get organized, how do they stay on top of it? What's

[00:11:01] a good frequency for people to check in on their money? So that's the third step is really going to depend on your personal financial needs. So in general, I recommend people open the mail at least

[00:11:13] once a week and that they review their cash flow on a weekly basis or buy monthly basis. Now there are some people that can probably get away with doing that stuff once a month, but I do recommend

[00:11:25] doing it more frequently in terms of reconciling your bank and credit cards once a month. Handling medical bills and insurance claims like that's a whole nother area of financial organizing where there's a lot to manage. Yeah, I've had that recently over the last six months and then the

[00:11:42] other day my wife was like hey I got this insurance thing for you to ask about now like oh I just finished the other ones so yeah that's it's over. Yeah so at least once a month you want to handle those

[00:11:53] types of things and then paperwork again you would want to file that on a monthly basis. So there is just some general guidelines. Yeah sounds like we need some sort of a calendar probably to help

[00:12:04] us with all of this some sort of reminder system which is great. What kind of tools do you use to help stay organized? You mentioned like quick in you've mentioned in a couple places use a calendar

[00:12:13] what are some things people can consider to use to get organized? In general or about their finances. Let's go in general because I think they could apply to both and then maybe we'll dive into finances too.

[00:12:24] So your calendar is your best time management tool hands down. They're all there all these apps out there and all these things but your calendar is like can be so robust in terms of managing

[00:12:38] your time. So use your calendar, use it to do list. Those two things work hand in hand. So when you're talking about organizing and whether it's your money or something else having a schedule

[00:12:50] to do it makes it more likely that you're going to do it. So if you say okay right I'm going to pay the open the mail and pay the bills on Saturday that's your day that you do it and you do it

[00:13:00] every week on the same day unless there's some kind of adjustment to your schedule and then you just adjusted for that week but having a regular this is the system right organizing is about

[00:13:10] systems having a system in place. I pay the bills on this date. The other thing about a system is having everything that you need in one place. Things have homes. So where are if you're writing

[00:13:23] checks, where's your checkbook? If you need to access accounts, where are those? Like having a designated place where you hold the mail until you open it, where you keep your things that

[00:13:36] you need to pay the bills, whether you're using a software calendar. Yeah I use quick in but if you don't use quick in you can use an Excel spreadsheet like if you're tracking your finances.

[00:13:47] But there are like apps out there that you can use. You live as you need a budget. Mint was one but I think they just went under. Yeah so there's some other ones out there. There's a lot of

[00:13:58] great tools and I think one of the things that I caught from what you said is everything needs a home then you don't have the pile of paperwork on the desk that you never want to get to because you

[00:14:08] don't really know what's in there. So the setting up these systems helps you in so many other ways. Absolutely. So having a place where you store like the things that you have to deal with

[00:14:17] and reviewing that on a regular basis makes it easier to review. If you deal with it weekly or every two weeks it's not so hard to handle. Yeah and I agree and I think people they think that

[00:14:28] when I mentioned my wife and I do a monthly budget meeting and they're like oh I can't imagine doing that because there's so much to talk about and honestly for us it's not that crazy because we

[00:14:36] keep an agenda which is more just a place to put ideas throughout the month that maybe are urgent then we have a dedicated time like you said to review our system and then we can say what changes

[00:14:46] do we need to make? What do we need to do here or there and it's a dedicated time. So I love what you're preaching here. This is great stuff. Fantastic so we're coming here to the close

[00:14:57] and of course if you have anything else come to mind please feel free to share but I got two final questions. The last one I'll put it in your mind now so you can start thinking about it but the

[00:15:06] last question is what is one thing you wish you would have known sooner when it comes to money and then before you answer that one if you could just share how people can learn more about

[00:15:14] you or find you online. One is called Clutterfo just like a sound and the other one is CPDMM so that's Charlie Peter David Michael Michael dot com so that's for CP Daily Money Management. Oh I thought it

[00:15:28] was for all those phonetic spellings that would be a weird website name. Yeah I'm on LinkedIn I'm currently working on a book about financial organizing and I'm creating some companion workshops and courses so if your listeners are interested they can subscribe on my website to receive updates

[00:15:45] on those. Awesome well that's fantastic when that book comes out maybe I'll have to give it a read and have you back on to talk about the wrap up here what is one thing you wish you would have

[00:15:53] known sooner when it comes to money. Oh the time value of money for sure right? That's how everyone says and I love it but I mean in two ways here source I mean next money over time right I wish I had

[00:16:03] started investing earlier. Trade our time for money. Yeah and I think of like little kids and they're like oh I can't do that it would cost me seven hours of work like that's honestly a great way to

[00:16:14] look at things because yeah because then you're saying oh my entire day at work tomorrow is to pay for this one silly little toy that I got that I don't really use so yeah thinking about money in

[00:16:24] terms of your hourly rating things like that can be really eye-opening honestly. Well Alexis this has been great thank you so much for coming on and helping everyone good organized with their finances.

[00:16:34] Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much to Alexis for coming on today's episode I think that was a really great interview talking about how you can get organized both in your life and

[00:16:54] in your finances. I also want to speak to the power of networking and how connecting can be powerful in your life towards making connections to get you to new opportunities because originally I had reached out to somebody else on a podcast guest service about talking about organization

[00:17:09] and they suggested I have someone better that would be able to talk more in line with money with you and that's how Alexis and I got connected so that was a great interview brought to you by the

[00:17:17] power of networking as well. So I want to start off today talking about the money talking points. The first money talking point is what do I need to organize with my finances? For a back-end eye,

[00:17:27] I think it's that just in case file. What would happen if Rebecca dies while Rebecca's been in school? We've done a pretty good job making sure she would be taking care of so that way there's insurance

[00:17:35] in place, there's documents so she would know how to run our finances because while we do talk about money together a lot I manage a lot of the numbers and the spreadsheets and things like that.

[00:17:44] So there's a lot of things in place to help make sure Rebecca is okay and she could finish her education but now there were closer and closer to her becoming the primary income in our family

[00:17:53] what happens if she dies or gets injured which is a terrible thought to think about but it's important. Insurance is crucial to consider here and while we do have life insurance for Rebecca

[00:18:02] there may also be some disability insurance that needs to be put in place because what if she can't perform her job because of a disability that doesn't qualify for life insurance now doesn't.

[00:18:10] What do you do for this question? That just in case file that we talked about in the interview today. Do you have everything set up? What is everything honestly? That's what starts bothering me in my mind

[00:18:19] is is it just a will? Is it a trust? Is it in a state? Do you do all of them? Do you do some of them but not other ones because they overwrite each other? How to benefit she or he's play a factor?

[00:18:28] What else is there to consider? So many terms get thrown around with the just in case file in that sort of area that it can be really confusing and overwhelming so this is an area that

[00:18:38] Rebecca and I need to get a little bit more organized with and build our system around. The second money talking point is what areas can I implement simplicity? For us it was stopping with so many

[00:18:47] credit card applications. It got hectic for a little bit where there were so many credit cards being opened randomly and all the time for us and maybe not randomly but there were so many

[00:18:56] credit cards being opened that we decided we needed to keep it simpler. So now we have it simple with just our normal credit cards. We've kept all the ones that we opened open. We didn't close any

[00:19:04] credit cards because that sometimes can impact your credit score but that's a different conversation. That we talked about in the most recent episode of the Money Talk Credit Card guide so make sure to go check that one out and get the free resource at MoneyTalkwithSkatherflamming.com slash resources.

[00:19:19] But back to areas of simplicity. We know that credit cards was an area that it was getting complicated and we didn't really want that. I didn't want to be the person credit card hacking. I didn't want

[00:19:28] to be telling Rebecca, hey make sure you're using this credit card in this quarter, this one, it those stores in this quarter and blah blah blah there's a whole lot of things to consider

[00:19:37] when you really get into credit card hacking and anyone who's good at that props to you. I'd love to learn so if you want to come on please shoot me an email. I'd love to talk to anyone

[00:19:45] or if you know someone if there's another podcast you listen to that you could connect to me with maybe their host they could come on this show or I'd be happy to go on theirs and we could

[00:19:53] talk about credit card hacking that would be really cool. The third money talking point is how can I avoid this organization in my finances and this is systems, systems, systems, right things down.

[00:20:04] The more things are written down the less likely they are to get disorganized. We have our financial plan written down and we update it on that written document every three months. We don't just

[00:20:15] suggest ideas and suggest new things and just change things willy nilly. It has to be written down on that document and in the event that we do update something outside of that normal three month

[00:20:24] window it gets written down or else we're going to forget about it. And why bother to remember when you have all the technology and means to write things down and let technology remember them

[00:20:33] for us. It keeps me sane and it keeps your back from getting annoyed by me when I'm bombarding her with financial updates and decisions all the time. So makes things a whole lot simpler for

[00:20:43] both of us keeps this a little bit more in line and on the same path. But next let's talk about the handy hint. So today's handy hint is a quick one that I've never brought up on this podcast before

[00:21:02] but something that I've heard about on a different podcast and suggested to me in a couple different places but its USPS's informed delivery and I talked about it in the interview and

[00:21:11] I wanted to share it because I realized I'd never talked about it here before. But this is a great thing. I don't have to check the mail anymore and that's awesome. Sure maybe you say no

[00:21:20] you're just lazy who doesn't like a walk out to the mailbox right? Maybe it's relieving for you to take a break in the evening or something like that or it's your chance to go on a short

[00:21:29] walk before you go inside when you get home from work but I don't want to bother checking the mail. I know that most of its junk and when I walk out there and I'm like oh we got three pieces of

[00:21:38] mail and it's all garbage, that's annoying. So now I know when I'm just getting garbage and I just leave it in there because frankly I don't care. Funny story real quick. I actually tried one

[00:21:46] time to keep all of our junk mail and I kept it in a pile and then on all of them I wrote unsubscribe stop mailing me something like that and I put them all back in the mailbox. It was like the

[00:21:56] thick stack of just junk mail that I wrote unsubscribe on all of it and the mail person actually came up to a front door and said you can't do this and they wouldn't take it which I thought

[00:22:06] was silly because I hate marketing mail. I think it's a waste of time and that's whole different topic but I thought it was funny. I tried to opt out of all of it but now with informed delivery

[00:22:16] I don't have to bother checking the mail until I actually know there's something in there that I want to get. It's free and easy just sign up online on the post offices website. So be

[00:22:24] sure to go and check it out. I highly recommend it. I think it's a great tool and saves me just that a little bit of time and I guess mental energy of checking the mail when it just comes to my email

[00:22:33] and I'm going to talk about email a little bit later in this episode but it's also an area you have to get a system around and keep organized especially if that's where your bills are going.

[00:22:41] The same tactic of getting rid of junk mail versus regular real mail when you're going to your mailbox applies in your email so something to consider and think about but next let's talk about

[00:22:50] the money matters minute. Alrighty and today's money matters minute I want to talk a little bit about inflation and this isn't a topic that I talk about a lot because honestly I don't know

[00:23:08] a whole lot about it and I'm not super up to date on this area of the news but for me in my wife it feels like we've adjusted but things still seem to cost a ton of money but I really feel it

[00:23:17] when we go out to eat. It is so insanely expensive to eat out anymore. I don't know how anyone does it especially even just for one person like if you're eating out every day for lunch

[00:23:26] that is so much money the you are spending on food but that's where I feel like inflation is hit the hardest prices on fast food and things like that have just felt like they've skyrocketed

[00:23:36] and that's where inflation I think still maybe I just don't understand how much fast food costs but news reports seem to be pointing towards inflation slowing down and that's where I wanted

[00:23:44] to see what are you thinking how do you feel about inflation shoot me an email but really I think it all depends on how we are spending money if we can keep track of our own spending and keep it

[00:23:52] in check then we're doing good. If your personal inflation rate is doing all right then you're doing okay who cares what the overall country inflation is at if you're able to maintain your spending

[00:24:03] and do good and stay below your means but that's the money matters minute how are you feeling about inflation shoot me an email I'd love to have a chat about it the next is the personal finance

[00:24:12] power up okay the personal finance power ups gonna be a quick one because it's something I've talked about recently but I want to harp on it again because it came up in today's interview and that

[00:24:30] is subscriptions turn off autopay like I said I talked about this a few episodes ago and detailed it but I feel it's warranted to talk about it again do not bother paying for subscriptions

[00:24:41] on autopay one you're likely to get a discount when you unsubscribe and it's been a few weeks and they're like oh come back please come back and they'll give you a discount for the

[00:24:50] subscription so there are so many other things that you should have on autopay like your bills your credit card statement balance which make sure to check out the credit card guide for more

[00:24:58] info on that one and other bills like that that are important that you need to have on autopay and subscriptions should not be one of them so when you sign up for a subscription go into their

[00:25:08] immediately and disable autopay cancel it so that it stops running the next time it goes to a new and then when you actually want to keep it you can just purchase one more month at a time I know

[00:25:18] it's a hassle but subscriptions is an excellent place to implement some friction in your life so that it's a little bit harder to automatically spend that money and maybe we need to do a

[00:25:28] deep dive actually now that I'm thinking about it on the power of friction in your financial life so I'm gonna write that one down and if you have any thoughts or comments on that one shoot me an email

[00:25:37] but let's wrap up today's episode next. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Money Talk with Skyler Fleming we talked about organization today and how you can get your finances in order

[00:25:56] ultimately today's episode taught me about the power of systems and how much they matter in our lives to make our lives so much easier. If we can have systems in place it can make everything we do so much easier.

[00:26:07] Start simple with your mail by signing up for informed delivery and then we'd out the junk mail from your actual mail very quickly and then like I said do the same thing in your email. I know it can be

[00:26:17] really daunting since email is so much more accessible for every company to get to you with but you need to do it, you need to get a system set up in your email and that starts by opting at

[00:26:26] and with all of our bills, email to us and so many other advertisements being emailed and things being mailed and stuff like that we have to have a system to keep our email

[00:26:34] and our regular inbox clear so I use our email to track expenses so that's why it's so important for me to keep me mail clear because if it was crowded it would throw off so many

[00:26:43] other systems in our life like our financial systems are spreadsheets things like that but when you're getting started with your system make sure to take stock of where you are today

[00:26:51] and then figure out where you want to go with some goals and then work towards building a system that's going to help you get there. You want to make sure that system is going to be

[00:26:58] easy to maintain and then you can let your system handle the decisions which is awesome when you get to that point but make sure to keep things simple. Thanks again to Alexis for coming on

[00:27:06] today's episode, you can find her information in the show notes of course but be sure to check out the website at moneytalkwithscadlerflaming.com and check out the new resource by clicking

[00:27:15] at the top of the website where it says resources and check out the Money Talk Credit Card Guide. Thank you so much for listening to Money Talk with Scadler Flaming. I'm your host, Skyler Flaming. Have a great week. Thank you for listening to Money Talk with Skyler Flaming.

[00:27:28] This show is provided for informational and entertainment purposes and may not be specific to your unique situation. Please be sure to do additional research before making any financial decisions.