3 ways to organize your finances and simplify your financial life for spring
Managing personal finances is often stressful. This is especially true if you don’t enjoy the task of managing money. Building wealth takes time and effort to make sure you’re doing everything right.
The good news is that you don’t have to spend endless hours working on your finances to set yourself up for success. There are simple ways to organize your financial life and make it a lot easier. Here are some suggestions to help you do this: You can give it a try once spring cleaning season begins.
1. Get one or two great rewards cards
Earning credit card rewards is a great way to reduce the actual cost of purchases. However, many people try to make this process too complicated. Oftentimes, you sign up for too many cards and have to juggle multiple rewards programs, or choose a card that requires you to log in multiple times to activate bonus rewards.
If you want to earn a lot of cash back or points and don’t want to go through the hassle, opt to sign up for one or two great cards that offer cash back on most things you spend.
For example, you could get a card that gives you 2% back on every purchase you make, or if you shop on Amazon regularly, you could get a card that gives you 5% back on Amazon purchases. Then use your 2% card everywhere except Amazon. Amazon allows you to set the 5% card as your default payment option.
Even with just one or two cards, you can get a lot of rewards without much effort. You are more likely to benefit from a rewards program because it is hassle-free to do so.
2. Automate your savings and bill payments
If you really want to get your financial life in order and spend as little time as possible on your finances, you can do that by automating everything you can. For example, you can set it up to automatically pay all your bills from your bank account and transfer money to your retirement and savings accounts.
Once you’ve set a goal for how much you want to save and invest, and kept your fixed expenses below about 50% of your income, you can pay those bills and automatically transfer the appropriate amount into savings. Every month, you’ll overdraft your bank account without thinking or worrying about it.
Once all automatic payments and investments are deducted from your account, you can spend the remaining funds without worry.
Related: best budget app
3. Make sure your investments align with your interests
If you enjoy researching companies and finding individual stocks to buy, this can be a great way to earn generous returns as long as you are a smart investor and buy solid companies and hold on to them for the long term.
But if you don’t like bombarding earnings reports, you may want to consider simplifying your portfolio. You can do this by tracking the performance of the S&P 500 or by investing in low-cost exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that track the performance of the stock market as a whole or a specific sector.
Investing in an S&P 500 fund means betting on America’s largest companies and choosing a financial index that consistently returns an average of 10% per year over the long term. You don’t need to check your portfolio regularly, in fact, you don’t need to check it more than once a year. You can let your money grow for you.
By following these simple steps, you can achieve financial success while significantly minimizing the amount of money management required. Get your financial life in order so you can focus on other things. For example, how you will ultimately spend all the money you effortlessly earned and saved.
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