Tenner Week Spring Clean Feb 2018: Wednesday

Our latest Tenner Week is rolling on, and today our Spring Clean schedule is taking us to a bit of decluttering and organising. We’re tidying this time rather than cleaning, and the activity is called Bills or bank statements.

All you need to do today is find some physical or virtual financial paperwork, and get it organised. You don’t have to sort out and tidy every single thing, just pick one category and do that.

You can choose any of the following:

• File paper bank statements or make a file for e-statements. If you have already filed these, you might want to check through them for mistakes instead.
• File building society statements, or statements for other savings
• File or organise documents for mortgage, loans or pension
• Collect together bills for Council Tax, energy bills, or phone bills
• Organise paperwork for your insurance (home / car / contents / annual travel etc)
• Check / update your tax records
• Make sure you’re on the electoral roll
• Organise and file your receipts for your work or self-employment expenses

There’s no need to sort out every single bit of documentation, just pick one and stick to it until it’s all tidied up and organised. Then, if there’s time, check though it to make sure it’s correct.

Filing / organising your statements, small print or bills is a good way to make yourself feel that you’re getting your finances under control, and a few minutes spent here today can be a real boost to your money confidence.

What’s happening here

Yesterday I cleaned some mirrors and picture frames in a lightning speed cleaning session, which wasn’t much but it does make the house a little nicer. Today I’ll be taking a short break after work and checking through my last couple of bank statements to make sure there are no standing orders or expensive payments that I could cancel. I wasn’t as organised as I’d like to be last month, so now’s the perfect time to make up for that.

I have a fitness lesson at lunchtime, and an evening class this evening (pre-paid), so I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere near the shops at all. Fingers crossed I’ll be able to have another no spend day today too. I stayed out of the shops on Tuesday as well, but did go to the library to make sure I didn’t have to pay fines on overdue books.

Yesterday’s dinner was pure comfort food: veggie bangers from the freezer, plus mash, gravy and fresh vegetables. As I’ll be getting home late from class tonight, we’ll be having a super-quick meal with some pre-cooked roasted vegetables mixed grains and melted cheese. Okay, that’s going to be reheated in the microwave and far from gourmet fare but I’m sure it’ll still be tasty, and reasonably healthy too. Having a menu like this when you’re busy takes a lot of the stress out of meal planning, and if you’re lucky the different meals are things you look forward to as well.

Total spent so far: £0.00.

How’s your spring cleaning coming along, and do you have any of your £10 budget left?