Financial Organization Pt 3: The Binders

Ahh... The Binders 

These are my transition points from my filing cabinets and between my once cluttered mail station. 

I now keep my weekly bills (necessary for tax purposes for our home office) in my financial organizer. 

When the organizer is full

 (after about 4 months it's fairly bursting)

 I transition my bills to my Binders. 

At one point, I had only one binder, but it soon was bursting at the seams as well.

 I had so many categories and so much to put in. 

Supplies:

   3" binders

Page/protector

 Dividers 

I originally used the white binder for everything financial. I prefer binders with pockets so I can shove unsorted bills, letters, etc. in there for later 

Dividers I also prefer with pockets for the same reason but without works just fine. Even though I repurposed, if you care about ease of reading your divider tabs, I would recommend purchasing all of them at once and getting them larger than the page protectors if possible. Ones with pockets are usually larger than the cheaper ones without. 

Now....How do I separate and categorize these binders? 

 White Binder: Financial Binder 
My categories are
Banking Info (statements, account information, etc) 
Cars (maintenance receipts, purchase records, insurance)
Financial Peace Documents (budgeting items, sheets, debt notes) 
Credit Cards
Utilities
School Loans

All these items I rotate out every year these items and put them in their proper folders in our filing cabinet. I always defer to Clay about how long we keep these files on hand.

Pink Binder: Personal Binder 

My categories are

Personal: Any separate entity information, such as personal accounts that will be helpful (forgive the morbidity and God forbid) if anything should happen to either myself or Clay. This category was inspired by my mother's passing and seeing how her organization greatly assisted us in taking care of her personal accounts; accessing emails, where she had banking accounts, etc. 

Dogs: All three pups' vet information, adoption papers, and other things they need 

House Information: receipts of our house updates, etc. 

Medical: Lab results, bills, etc. 

Debt Payoff Letters: these are so satisfactory to keep. I keep such a special notes as a constant reminder of debts paid in full. 

Pay stubs

Reimbursement receipt (for our over the counter purchases)

Donations (such as to our church, Goodwill, etc) 

                                                        Pocket Protectors:                         

Every company has its own pocket protector. A year's worth of bills stacked on top of each other fit with little wiggling into one pocket protector.  

I tried them in separate folders hole punched to fit in the binder but, everything just fits so much more snuggly in the pocket protectors and the transparency helps when searching for specific companies or bills. 

 I hope this all has been hopeful! All these tools have helped a great deal for me to keep a previously messy stack of papers into something easily navigated and accessible. 

Thank you!