Dollars and Sense

These projects took a little more time than I expected, and one came out of doing the other, but they're sort of mutually beneficial.  My goal is to create order in my life, and that not only applies to my physical life in my home, but my family's finances as well.  (A rather abstract and intangible portion of my life, sometimes...)  A few weeks ago, a very good friend of mine, Laura, mentioned a web application in a post on a well-known social media website.  I immediately recognized its GENIUS and started setting it up for my family's finances.

Mint.com is simply amazing!  You can link EVERY account you have: bank accounts, credit cards, investment accounts, auto loans.  Every few hours, it downloads the transactions and balances, and keeps them all in one place so you can see everything that happens.  Also, it categorizes all of the transactions for you and tracks your spending over time.  In addition, you can set a budget for as many categories as you can imagine and set goals like paying off your debt, saving for retirement or college, paying cash for a house, etc.  Mint even suggests new insurance, credit cards, and investments based on how yours look against other mint.com users and what's available out there in the marketplace!  It took me quite a few hours today, but I got everything set up.

In my efforts to link all of our accounts, I realized that over time, I've used many (many, many) different usernames and passwords.  I've had the little book pictured below for a while, and had only barely used it.  Well, today all that changed!!  Every username and password for every website our family uses is now stored here!

This little password book is brought to you by getbuttonedup.com, a company that makes adorable and straightforward products that help people get organized in everyday life, for big events, and for emergencies, to name a few.  They also have a newsletter and free tools and downloads, all devoted to organization!  I purchased my password.log at Office Depot, but you can purchase it here, along with life.doc, moving.kit, errand.pad, do&delegate.list and all of the other cutie patootie items they sell!

I didn't make my house look prettier today, but I certainly made my life prettier!!

And THAT's what I did today while my son was sleeping!