Financial Organization

In her Motion to Organize weekly column, lawyer Jennifer Gumbel talks organization, productivity, and more.

Companies need binders, but whatever financial empire you run, a business, a side hustle or your household, you need an organizing system.

Very few of us are the types of nerds (said with love) that look forward to “reviewing finances” on their to-do list. God bless those that are, by the way. Even if you are a nerd, finances can feel intimidating and stressful. Having a jumble of mismatched binders and drawers full of random papers makes this very necessary part of adulting harder.

I’m a color code kind of person. I love organizing according to the ROYGBIV method. It allows me to immediately know where things are without giving it a thought and the natural visual progression of color is stress relieving. If you doubt it, spend some time on Pinterest searching ROYGBIV and feel your blood pressure go down.

Think of your financial information:

• Debts
• Tax information
• Real estate information
• Car information
• Investments and retirement information
• Insurance numbers and anything else

Simply assign each category a color and use binders, folders, and tabs to mark each category.

Whether it’s your business or at home, money stuff is stressful enough. Make it as easy as possible. Avoid the worst kind of scavenger hunt and organize your paperwork.

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Written by Jennifer Gumbel

Jennifer Gumbel is an estate planning and probate lawyer in Austin, Minnesota. She takes her morbid nerd-dom to another level by talking about how to organize your after life, with the website An Organized (after)Life and the podcast, An Organized (after)Life, which you can find on the website, Spreaker and ITunes. You can also find her on Instagram with pics on death organizing and small town Minnesota life at the handle @jengumbel.