- Family and Personal Money Management -
Organize Finances and Organize Your Life

Family and personal money management skills can help you organize your finances and your life.

The real basics of money management for organized living require that you understand your finances and put systems in place to control it.

You cannot organize your life without money management skills. It is impossible to achieve control over your life if you do not have control over your money. That includes understanding how much there is, where it comes from and where it goes.

Managing your money is the same as managing your stuff. You have to first understand it and then find places to put it so that it is there when you need to use it.

Plastic containers, storage baskets, and bins can hold your stuff but your money goes into virtual containers called accounts. Usually your accounts are in a bank - that is the safest place to store your money. Mattresses, shoe boxes, and money jars are not recommended as money storage containers.

If you place the right amount of money in an account over time it will accumulate and it will be there when you want it for a specific purpose.

Unlike clutter you want your money to accumulate! It has to accumulate or it will not be there when you need it to do its job for you.

Fortunately for all of us money takes up no space!

What is meant by "Personal Money Management"

Making money and building wealth are not the same thing as managing money.

Making money has as its goal getting money.

Building wealth has as its goal accumulating money and then converting that money into assets or using it to make more money.

Personal money management has a different goal and the goal is control. First you must understand your money and then you have to set up systems to control it.

That sounds like organized living to me!

You manage money by understanding it, you build wealth by how you use it.

Hopefully if you understand and manage your money well you will have enough to actually use it for wealth building.

But it does not matter how much energy you invest in wealth building you will never be wealthy unless you understand your money and your own personal finances.

The Money Jar Method of Personal Money Management

It wasn't that long ago that wages were issued as a "pay packet" which essentially was an envelope stuffed with cash. The money was brought home on payday and stuffed (again) into envelopes or money jars each labelled as to the final destination or intended use of that money.

How much money was put in each jar? That was easy to figure out because people understood how much money was needed for that jar until the next pay packet was issued.

Over the course of the month the money in the MORTGAGE jar went to the bank to make the mortgage payment, the money in the GAS BILL jar went to gas company to pay for heat, and the money in the GROCERIES jar went to buy food.

It was a simple system, but a system nonetheless.

A money jar system for personal money management keeps the cash highly visible. It is easy to see the relationships between money and the services or goods it is intended to purchase.

It is also easy to see when money in the money jar is running out.

Because the money in the money jars is visible it is obvious when the jar fills up again with the next pay day. In other words, using the money jar method makes personal money management easy to understand. It is a highly visible way to organize your finances.

No More Money Jars Today!

It is quite likely that you seldom, if ever, see or handle your money. Cheques and electronic fund transfers have taken the place of the "pay packet", bank accounts have taken the place of money jars and debit and credit cards have taken the place of cash.

Because money is not highly visible and is now more of an abstract concept it becomes more difficult to understand and control. If you have difficulty understanding your money when you cannot see it and hold it may be more difficult for you to organize your finances.

This area of the website will provide information, tips and tools for understanding money just as though you had those money jars and filled them up every payday!

The goal is to explore ideas about family and personal money management that form the foundation for organized living.

Now that Makes Sense!

More on personal money management skills and how to organize your finances.

The Absolute Basics of Money Management to help you organize your finances. Money Management Advice for Organized Living - sorting your money into categories that you can understand. Are you in the black or in the red? A money management worksheet makes it easier to organize your finances and understand where your money is going. Money Management Tips for Organized Living - Minimum requirements for understanding your money and tips to help you control it. Ideas for teaching money management skills to your kids. Family Money Management Advice - ideas to help you gain better control of family money management issues like borrowing and lending to family members. A description of the Envelope Budget System.