Category: organization

One Of The Best Ways To Spend $79.95.

No one thinks it will happen to them – a complete computer crash. In fact, knock on wood, it has never happened to me…yet. But someday, it probably will. Years ago I started backing up my computers once a week, so if it did happen the most I could lose would be a single week’s worth of data. In the grand scheme of things, that wouldn’t be so bad. However, my mom had not been backing up her computer for the last 2 years…and it died on her. Everything she had on there, from family pictures to stories she was writing, were lost forever. She took it somewhere to see if they could recover anything, but it was a total loss. And it could have all been saved if she had only followed my instructions to back her stuff up often! There really isn’t any excuse anymore to not back up your computer, as external hard drives were way more expensive a few years ago but now a tiny, portable 320 GB drive is only about $79.95. 320 GB should be large enough for 99% of people, as it’s plenty for me and I have hours of video footage stored on my computer, which take up a ton of space.

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What To Do With All Those Important Documents.

You know you have piles of them – tax returns, insurance documents, old bills, receipts, and bank statements. But what can you do with them other than throw them in a box to deal with later? Do you even need to save any of them any longer? Lucky for you, I just read an article in my T. Rowe Price newsletter that has some answers for you:

How Long To Keep Tax Documents

Keep copies of your tax return (and related docs) for seven years. After seven years, you can keep just an electronic copy of your return and shred your supporting documents.

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Settlement Gives Everyone Free Copies Of Their Credit Report & Score.

If you have already used up your free credit reports for 2008 (I have one more to use in the last quarter of the year), a settlement of a class-action lawsuit that was filed against Transunion lets you get your report and your score, as often as you want, for 6 months. Transunion had allegedly sold customer profiles to third parties and got caught – thus the settlement.

If you want to sign up to get your reports and scores for the 6 months, just head over to listclassaction.com and register for the service. And as much as I hate when petty class-action lawsuits get taken advantage of, I think this one has merit and everyone should take the time to register for their free scores!

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Giving Away Our Stuff – Freecycle Is The Greatest Website Ever.

In preparing for our move, we are doing our normal “how in the world do 2 people acquire this much stuff?” dance, and we are clearing out our neglected closets and cabinets in order to pare down our belongings. For someone with OCD like myself (not diagnosed, mind you, just claimed), I don’t know how we end up with this much stuff. I hate clutter and mess – but yet my closets are packed with stuff we have not used in oh, at least a year. And because I don’t want to deal with the headache of trying to sell this stuff, I went ahead and listed a bunch of it on freecycle.org last night…and proceeded to receive hundreds of emails for it all! So later on today, I have a bunch of people coming to the house to pick up their free bounty, some of which includes:

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Tips For Helping With Household Budgeting.

Seeing as how my mom is here and it always costs a good chunk of change when people come visit, I figured some tips from this article at Life Organizers was very timely!

  • 1. Keep your financial records organized and your filing up to date. Have a set of file folders for items such as receipts, bills, canceled checks, checking account statements, etc. Have a designated place where you keep or can easily assemble your master budget, your financial files, checkbook, etc. so it is all in one convenient location.
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