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“Time is more valuable than money.  You can get more money but you can not get more time.” – Jim Rohn

One of the smartest things you can do from financing point is to monitor where every single penny is going to.  Monitor your finances, expenses and earnings.  Once you know how much money is coming in and how much is going out and where it’s going out, you are in a better position to design your financial plan.

We all know how much time is coming in.  It’s 24 hours in a day.  All across the world, no matter who you are or how rich or how poor you are, everyone has 24 hours in a day.   At the end of the day we all know that we’ve spent all those 24 hours.  There is no savings here, once the time has gone, it’s gone forever.

Where are you spending your time?

Majority of the people around the world have jobs so let’s say around 10 hours a day are spent on the job.  Now that includes the job itself and commuting.  If you are sleeping around 8 hours a day, you are still left with 6 hours.  Out of those 6 hours let’s take out 2 hours for eating, getting ready for work, showering etc.  Now we’re left with those 4 hours.   What are you doing with those 4 hours?  Are you spending that time watching television?  Are you doing another activity that you enjoy?  Do you have a hobby?  Do you have another job? Do you volunteer?

I am going to start monitoring where my time’s being spent. I still have tomorrow off as a holiday so I will start monitoring my time on tuesday.  This will be a great eye opener.  At the end of the day it always feels like another day has gone by and nothing has been achieved.

This way I can find out exactly what I am doing with my time and make some changes accordingly.

Keeping everything organized is one of the most important habits that everyone should develop.  For example if you have your receipts organized you won’t have to stress much when it comes time to do your taxes.  This is especially important if you are a business owner and can write off a lot of your expenses against your income.

Even if you are not collecting your receipts for the purpose of reducing your taxable income you can still benefit greatly by keeping them organized.  Reason being, it helps to know where you are spending your money so you can make wiser financial choices.  It is one of the first rules of money management.  Whenever you go see a financial adviser, they would want you to keep track of your expenses and based on that would devise your future financial plan.

Here is what I found to be extremely helpful.  By my bedside I have a big yellow envelope and it’s named march 2008.  Every night I put all my receipts for the month of march in it after I write them down in my notebook or computer.  Every month I get a new envelope for that month and put all my receipts in that envelope.  I have tried to keep the envelopes in a nicer and safer place but I found that that just deterred me from putting my receipts in it.  I would always procrastinate putting receipts in that envelope until a few months worth of receipts piled up by my bedside.  So, one day I just decided to keep the monthly envelope by my bedside and it’s worked like a charm ever since.  At the end of the month this envelope gets sealed while a new one opens up.

And I got these envelopes from the dollar store.  I believe 10 envelopes for $1.00 + tax = $1.13 or so. Not too bad of an investment.  And it keeps my accountant happy  as well.

Prior to doing any sort of organizing for my receipts I used to keep them in a plastic bag.  Plan being that I would just sit down one day and copy everything to an excel sheet instead of wasting time every single day.  Well, that doesn’t work!  It is an overwhelming task when you have to do it and not to mention that the ink on a lot of the receipts got erased.

So, try it out and I am sure you will like it.