Are you financially disorganised?

 

Are your finances disorganised? Do you find yourself often looking for documents or missing due payments? Let us start this year clutter-free and plan to sort out our paperwork before the end of January. Here are some simple tips to help you to organise your finances in a way that will contribute to your financial success this year.

Have you over the years developed a complicated and cumbersome financial system for yourself that needs changing? How many bank accounts do you have and how many do you actually need and use regularly? Do you have a current account with Bank A, a savings, a current account and a debit card with Bank B, a current account with an online banking facility with Bank C, a mutual fund account, two stockbrokers, several PINs and passwords that you keep forgetting? Are you routinely paying fees and bank charges for not maintaining an appropriate balance?

The Nigerian banking industry has evolved to a point where leading banks, along with their subsidiaries, can provide comprehensive financial services that cover the full gamut of your financial needs; this includes personal banking, online banking, cards for both local and international use, brokerage and mutual fund services and trust services.

Which bank offers you the best services? Is it a responsive and strong financial institution? If you have more than two bank accounts, you might consider closing down the ones you don’t really use unless the accounts play very specific roles. When you are dealing with no more than two institutions, the process of managing your finances is much simpler.

Are you swamped by paper? Paperwork consumes our homes, our offices and our lives and causes stress as we search frantically for important documents. You need to reclaim your wasted space from all those statements and bills that have piled up. Set aside some time to go through your paperwork. You will be surprised to find some forgotten documents, such as old policies that may have lapsed, or matured, unclaimed dividend warrants or share certificates that have not been dematerialised. These could be of significant value. There might even be an old bank account that you have forgotten about that has since fallen dormant, with a balance that is due to you.

Invest in a document scanner. Save and backup your data by scanning your critical and sensitive personal and financial documents. Many smart phones have applications that you can use to “scan” documents using the integrated camera; some of these produce very good digital images. An electronic version that will protect the documents from fire, theft or other losses is easily accessible and will also be legible long after ink has faded. By storing them through an online storage provider such as drop box, or at least on a hard drive, you can reclaim some of your space. Thereafter, you may shred documents that you don’t need to keep to reduce clutter.

Some critical financial documents must be retained in their original paper form for verification purposes; these include birth certificates, passports, insurance policies, title documents; these should be kept securely in a secure fire-proof cabinet or safe but it is useful to retain scanned copies of these documents as well in case they get lost, stolen or damaged.

Keep confidential documents securely so you do not end up being a victim of fraud and identity theft. Your financial information is very personal and you should try to maintain confidentiality to protect yourself from fraud. When your garbage is picked up, you don’t know exactly where it ends up. Old bank and financial statements, old bills can become prime targets for thieves. Consider buying a shredder so that you can shred any sensitive document that you no longer need; this way, you can minimise the chances of your documents and sensitive information getting into the wrong hands.

Make the transition from paper to technology if you haven’t done so to save both time and space. With online banking, you can carry out most of your routine banking transactions at your convenience. If you have Internet access, you can check your account balance, pay bills, make transfers and manage your various accounts with a few simple clicks from your laptop or computer, your i-Pad or your smart phone. Automating your regular payments via a direct debit is an easy process and will take away the stress of having to remember all your monthly obligations. Once you start organising your finances electronically, you will wonder how you ever coped without technology.

Choose a certain day each month to spend some time attending to your routine financial matters. A regular schedule devoted to this might sound onerous at first but after a few months you will see what a difference it makes, and you will wish you had put this in place long before now.

It is difficult to be perfectly organised all the time, but these simple tips should help. Being financially disorganised has cost implications; charges on late credit card payments, erroneous debits to your account that you didn’t observe for many months are just a few. Try to spend some time over the coming weeks putting your paperwork in order; it will save you a lot of financial headaches this year.

Nimi Akinkugbe