SDH 435: How I Organize My Life and Business (Including Finances)

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Hello, hello! Today I’m sharing how I organize my life and business, including finances. I heard someone else do this on a podcast and thought it was a great way to share a ‘behind-the-scenes’ look and give you some ideas on how you could implement some of these strategies in your own life.

My love language is organization; I’m very much a Capricorn in that sense. I’ve been known to help friends clean out and organize their closets. In fact, when I was in junior high, I had a friend who was pretty messy and every time I’d go over to her place, I’d want to clean and organize her bedroom and closet...because I get that much enjoyment out of it.

My husband and I will find ourselves on a weekend cleaning out our place and organizing our personal life including making sure all our accounts are up to date and going through our insurances to make sure they’re on autodraft. My physical space is extremely important to me. If it is a mess, it is harder for me to focus. So it is really important for me to make sure that it is easy to keep a clean space. I very much live by the rule, everything has its place. Whether it is a set of car keys, digital photos, important documents, you name it. Because when everything has its place, it becomes easier to find. Inside the membership program, Elevate University we’re focusing on how to be scalable from the start, including organizing our digital life, from email, Google drive, Asana, and more.

So let’s dive in...

Personal:

Shared Google Drive & Calendar with Mike:
- We have folders for everything in Google drive from finances, insurance, taxes for each year, information on our building that we own, and more. That way when we receive a document we immediately upload it to the appropriate folder.
- We also keep a separate gmail account for personal emails and drive storage.
Shared Asana dashboard:
- Here, we keep track of tasks and things that need to be done. For example, if one of us needs to review a charge on our joint credit card.
As a rule, we tend to not keep a lot of clutter; very minimalist style. We recently did a massive cleanout of ‘things’ after watching “Less Is Now”.
Together, we “reset” almost every night. Making sure that dishes are in the dishwasher, the living room is picked up, and everything is ready to go for the next day. Now sometimes this isn’t achievable and when that happens I default to setting a timer for 10 minutes and doing as much as I can, or it simply doesn’t get done. And that’s okay. But I really aim to clean up as I go throughout the day to avoid a complete mess at the end of the day.
If I’m not motivated to do a task, or I’m making it out to be much bigger in my head, I’ll set a timer for 10 minutes and do the task. Usually it is taking out the trash or having to go downstairs to our basement for laundry.
Packing lists for traveling are essential and help to keep me organized and on track while packing.
We keep a birthday list of people’s birthdays on the calendar.
Everything goes on the calendar. If I have a dentist appointment, I plan for the appointment, as well as the drive to and from the dentists office and home.
My phone. I am constantly taking inventory of the apps on my phone and removing those that I don’t use regularly.
Once a month I set aside time to upload my photos to my Google photo account and delete them from my phone.
Every week we go through money and finances and settle up via Splitwise.

Finances:

When my husband and I got married we combined finances. We had also viewed our individual money as our money as a couple. We tried many different approaches to organize our money. We used Mint and created budgets for just about everything. But the problem we kept running into was that if one of us had a big night out with friends, we’d up half of our ‘restaurant budget’ for that week/ month, and if I wanted to take a girls trip it would eat into our travel budget. The same with something as simple as wanting to buy a board game (which I know doesn’t sound like a ton of money, BUT if you have friends, family, or spouses that play board games and who are enthusiastic about board games...they can be quite the purchase!). We also kept going over the budget almost every month. Nothing crazy but it was enough for me to say,

“What’s the point of having a budget if we don’t stick to it?”

We both needed a little bit more accountability, and visibility, into our own spending.

A little over a year ago I presented my husband with an idea. And yes, when I say I presented, I mapped it out on a piece of paper, and then wrote it out on a flip chart (again, very much the Capricorn in me). But I also knew that presenting any idea to my husband required a fully thought-out plan.

My plan suggested that rather than operating from one main budget we instead give each other monthly allowances. That way it is up to us to manage our individual finances month-to-month. So if I want to go on a girls trip, that may mean I need to stash away a certain amount every month. If we wanted to buy a snowboard (which he did) that means he needed to stash a certain amount every month. Every month we would move our individual allowances to separate debit cards. We did this over using credit cards because it was instant and easier to manage.

To establish our monthly allowance amount we first needed to build a budget that would allow us to exactly see what was coming in, what was going out, as well as seeing our savings goals and previous spending habits.

Here was our approach:

We set a budget using Google sheets. This included:

Section for income; my husband’s income, my income, my business draws and our rental income
Section for ‘Core Overhead’ which meant that these are things that do not come out of our individual allowances but reduce the overall income
2a. Mortgage
2b. Car payment
2c. Car insurance
2d. Disability and Life insurance
2e. Gas
2f. Investing (beyond retirement plans)
Individual allowances
Savings

A few things to note:

For the majority of our purchases, while we’re out we use our debit cards to split the bill. I know it may not sound romantic, but I don’t label or allow it mean that if we’re splitting the bill it isn’t romantic, because essentially it’d be coming out of the same account anyway. I recognize that not everyone combines their finances with their spouse. If we’re in a situation where it doesn’t make sense to use our debit cards, we use a shared credit card.
Weekly, I do a full review of our accounts and spending (except for our individual accounts) to track everything. That way if a purchase was put on our joint AMEX, I put it in Splitwise and then we each settle up. I realize this may sound labor intensive but by incorporating weekly money dates and this ritual, we have been able to save much more.

My Favorite Tools

Lastpass:
- Stores passwords so they will automatically populate when you go to a website
- You can securely share passwords with your team and family members
Asana:
- Use Asana as my central business hub tool
Google drive:
- My Google Drive organization reflects the same organizational system I use for Asana to help keep things consistent
Gmail:
- Folders for me to review later, to delegate to my team, and other areas
Google calendar:
- I have different calendars (color coded) for different events inside of my calendar:
  - Content creation
  - Launch/promotion
  - Elevate University
  - Podcast Your Way
  - Sub-Contract work
  - Personal

If you’re looking to get extremely organized in your life and business, you definitely want to sign up for Elevate University. February’s course will teach you how to set up and organize Gmail, your calendar, your Google Drive, how to identify processes, create templates and then automate the process using Asana, and more. To join and get immediate access, sign up at www.shediditherway.com/elevate. In addition to weekly coaching calls, we added monthly standing co-working hours so every month there is a co-working hour for content planning, goal review and setting, and calendar planning.

I would love to know how you organize your business and life. Take a screenshot and tag us on Instagram (@shediditherway).

Until next time, keep doing it your way!

Insights:

“My physical space is extremely important to me. If it is a mess, it is harder for me to focus.”
“I very much live by the rule, everything has its place.”
“We both needed a little bit more accountability, and visibility, into our own spending.”
“To establish our monthly allowance amount we first needed to build a budget that would allow us to exactly see what was coming in, what was going out, as well as seeing our savings goals and previous spending habits.”