Four Ways to Spring Clean Your Finances

There’s something about the onset of spring that makes everyone want to clean up and get organized.  While tidying up your house, consider spring cleaning your finances, too. Here are four quick and easy ways to do it:

Create a budget

Spring is a great time to create a budget or re-assess the one you already have.  Ask yourself if the budget you have created is realistic. Are you spending too much?  Or are you spending so little that you aren’t having any fun? Find a happy medium. Save, but not to the point of being miserable.

Apps that help: Mint, You Need a Budget, Wally

How they work: they track expenses and help you create and stick to a budget.

Save your receipts

Saving receipts and checking them against your budget is always a smart idea, but it can be cumbersome to manage all of that paper.

Apps that help: Expensify, Neat, Zoho Expense, Evernote

How they work: they scan your receipts and some even link with accounting apps.

Pay on time

Set up autopay for regularly occurring expenses and get reminders for all other bills, so you are never late.

Apps that help: BillMinder, Manilla

How they work: Both apps send payment reminders and BillMinder will autopay

Reduce monthly expenses

There are cost savings in your regularly occurring bills that you probably aren’t aware of.  People often overpay for things like wireless, internet, home security, TV and satellite radio services, but it’s too much of a hassle to try to get better deals.

The app that helps: Billshark

How it works: send Billshark your bills and they negotiate better monthly rates, so you can put those savings right back into your budget.

Kick off your financial Spring cleaning with these 4 easy steps so you can stop worrying about finances and start enjoying the nice weather!