52 weeks... this year is flying by!!

I never did make it back last week to talk about taxes. I'm honestly not sure what happened... such is life (or at least, such is MY life!)

Anyway, so as I shared when talking about my bills, I have a pocket folder where I can keep receipts and such for tax purposes. This really hasn't been a big deal for us in the past - not owning a home and having a larger family has made it easier to just take the standard deduction and not itemize. The last year or so though, as I've went along with my own "business", and with changes with the husbands income/job(s) in the last year - it was a good idea to track those things. HOWEVER, it seems a better system will have to come into place - because I was missing receipts by year end. What really stinks about missing receipts, is that I'm pretty sure if I had had all of them, I would have had no taxes to pay on my business income. (Which says a lot to me... like, should I bother staying with the business ((I sell jewelry independently through lia sophia - LOVE the jewelry, I really do!)) or maybe I should move on???)

Anyway, so let's take a look at what HSS 101 has to say about tax organization...

Step 1: Understand The Broad Categories Of Receipts So You Can Organize Them Easily
Makes sense - easy enough.

Step 2: Make A Habit Of Dealing With Your Receipts And Any Tax Documents Weekly
Step 2 will be SUPER important for us for next year... I'm going to have to make it a habit... much like weekly blogging. :)

Step 3: Create Your Filing System For Minor Receipts

Step 4: Create A System For Filing Major Receipts Necessary To Complete Your Personal Home Inventory
This, I actually already do - but I've always done it more so in case a major purchase were to need repaired or replaced.
Another thing they talk about here is considering a receipt scanner and then saving your receipts electronically, just in case. That's a pretty smart idea, if you ask me!

Step 5: Home Filing System For Tax Documents That May Be Used In Later Years, But Not Now
I'm just going to copy and paste what they say about this - because I think it's pretty important stuff!

In step 5 of the Create A Personal Tax Organizer and Organize Receipts Challenge, we're figuring out how to organize one of two major categories of tax documents. This category of tax documents are really things we'll deal with more next week, when we put the finishing touches on our home filing system, and keep track of home expenses, insurance documents, investments, etc., so don't worry about it this week too much.
Just so you get an idea of what items this category includes, it includes, but is not limited to, records of retirement and non-retirement based investments, expenses incurred on your home, such as a new roof or furnace, etc.
These are documents you most likely would save anyway at least for the entire time you own that particular piece of property, but you may also reference them at tax time in a future year, such as if you sell or otherwise dispose of that property in a year.
A good rule of thumb for these types of documents is to keep them the entire time you own that piece of property, and then for six tax years thereafter if you had to reference it in your taxes the year you disposed of it.

Step 6: Create A Personal Tax Organizer System For Storing Your Tax Documents You'll Reference In This Year's Tax Returns
This will definitely look different for everyone. Here is a list of things you will want to organize and store

• Income (including documents received from third parties, such as form W2s and form 1099s)
• Medical
• Donations
• Child care costs
• Business or professional deductions
• Tax correspondence (with IRS or state officials)
• Student loan payments
• Misc. receipts for other deductions
• Payments of tax made throughout year (such as for quarterly estimated taxes, etc.)
• Slot for your copy of your filed tax return, once it is completed

To store these things, HSS has some great ideas. Practically, I think a simple accordion file, or something like it, could work.

Step 7: Create A System To Purge Documents Periodically Without Causing Yourself Liability Worries
So, the husband and have been married for our entire adult lives (seriously - straight from highschool!) and we have ALL of our tax information filed away in our family filing cabinet. Every.Single.Year. Now, I highly doubt that the IRS will come chasing us down... I mean, when you marry as teenagers, it's pretty safe to say that it's going to take some time before you're millionaires. Obviously, we're not there yet. No where close. Since we're still young, I don't want to count us out of the Bill Gate's country club just yet, but it's not looking too promising that we'll ever be there. Still, there's that lingering fear in the back of my mind that one day we could get audited. I want all of my t's crossed and my i's dotted. So, I've held on to it all. That is a LARGE file, and I'm sure it's going to get larger in the years to come. Nonetheless, it just seems wise to hold on to these things for the time being.

The next topic for our 52 weeks is organizing files... ok, so I don't understand why people would need a "how-to" guide on this. But if you want to check it out, you can visit what HSS has to say about it right -->here<-- .  Maybe it's the administrator in me, but this stuff is cake. Seriously! My files are organized. Beautifully. Complete.

 I'm getting a little antsy waiting for a serious organization project to come up in this challenge. Only a few more weeks on this office and paper clutter stuff. :)

Organizing all that paper clutter!

For the next few weeks the 52 Weeks to an Organized Home Challenge over at Home Storage Solutions 101 will be guiding us through how to organize all of our paper clutter. Last week was week 11 in the challenge and was focused on Organizing Bills. This week is focused on organizing taxes.

For Organizing Bills you can check out what HSH101 suggests (great suggestions - I have their main page linked above) but my way is just a tad bit different. Paper clutter, for me, is one of those things I just can't stand. Almost always, I'm throwing it away as quickly as it is coming in. Almost always. And as organized as I am, I'm kind of a scatter brain - I think my tendency of being a flake of sorts is really the drive behind my organization need. So, we already have a bill system in place and it's SO easy. Each month I print off a spreadsheet of the bills we have. Once upon a time we just did this in excel and kept track on the computer. The only problem with that was when our hard-drive crashed, leaving me without my spreadsheet AND my records. Sure, I could have (should have) been backing it up, but I wasn't, and it was gone, and so I decided that printing the spreadsheet would work best for us.
At the top of my sheet it says Monthly Bill Tracker -- for the month of _______________ and I just fill in that blank each month, and then save the sheet for later if need be. Then I have 5 columns in the sheet - one for whom the bill is due to - one for the amount or the average/budgeted amount due - one for the due date -- these three columns rarely change and so they're already filled in. The final two columns - amount paid - date paid -- I leave those blank and fill them in after paying the bill. I have a couple of extra rows at the bottom, just in case something else (or dreadedly unexpected) comes in during the month. I even include a row for our tithe, and that helps me keep myself accountable that I'm giving the right amount each month.
See! Easy peasy!
I keep my printed spread sheet in a two pocket folder. This is also where I keep my bills as they come in. When I'm really doing good, I print off the spreadsheet, punch three holes into and put it into the prongs of the folder! Sometimes though, I slack off and just slide it into the pocket with the bills. :) I keep all the unpaid bills in the left pocket. Some of our bills are e-bills, and we do pay most of our bills "online" now. But I do save some of our bills, like ones that we can claim for taxes (housing) in the right pocket of the folder. This is where I also save receipts that we can claim for housing. By the end of 2011, that side of the folder was pretty full, but it held it all! Any bills that I don't need to save, I shred. Of course, sometimes I'm not so prompt at that. Like, right now, I have a paper shred pile sitting next to my chair on the floor. I'll get to it... eventually!

I'll come back to organizing taxes later this week!

52 Weeks of Organization ~ week number... wait, what week are we on?

I kind of suck at this.

Sometimes I think I should change my blog title to "The Occasional Blogger" (I bet it's already taken, though!) And you know, honestly, I think that simplifying does actually equal less time online - aka blogging. Excuse? Maybe. But it's valid!

Anyhoo... I'm still in this. We're actually on week 11, but I have weeks 9 and 10 to catch you up on. Or catch up on. lol Let's go through this process now, shall we?

Week 9 - Organizing Your Address Book/Contact Information
Step one of this is to decide how you want to store your info: electronic, paper, or hybrid. For me, it's hybrid. Some info I'll save electronically (as in, I'm not writing down email addresses, so those are electronically stored online!) and the rest on paper. I guess I'm "old fashioned" like that, but I love my address book.
Step two is to create a simple address book. I don't have to do this step because I already have an address book. :)
Step three is to create a quick glance paper list with vital contact info like "spouse and kids' numbers, physicians and dentists contact info, along with frequently called numbers for your work, other family, and friends. You may have other contact information types of categories to add to this too, depending on your life circumstances." This is a great idea - I have all of that stuff memorized, but that won't help someone else, so I'm making that list now. It includes the husband and offspring number 1's cell phone numbers. Since I don't have a cell phone I don't need to add my number (GASP! It's true! I don't feel I need one, so I don't have one.) Then it will include my parents phone number, my sisters phone number, my in-laws phone numbers, a few close friends, and then the doctors and dentists number. And because I want it really neat, I'm typing it and printing it off. Awesomesauce!
Step four is to create an emergency contact list. I'm just adding that to the quick glance list - adding poison control (that's 1-800-222-1222 here in the U.S., people!) and the reminder of 911.
Step five is to create a list of information that you keep in your wallet, just in case it were to get stolen. I don't carry credit cards, so all I have is my bank card, drivers license, and some shopper cards. I feel pretty confident that I can remember that!
Step six is to create a business contacts list, or organize business cards. um... I don't know. As a stay-at-home-mom, I'm just not feeling the urgency for that. I have all of our contacts for things like bills/utilities with my bills and such. I don't do much business with people, at least not on the homefront, so I'm going to skip this step.
The last thing I want to do with this part of the challenge is organize my email contacts and my address book. Clean them out, "delete" a contact or two that I really don't need anymore for whatever reason.

Week 10 was creating a home mail organizer. I already have this - it's called a garbage can! If you struggle with the paper clutter mail can create, check out the challenge page for this part of the challenge (click here!) In all honesty, sometimes our mail/paper clutter pile grows, but most of the time it isn't an issue. I put coupons on top of the microwave until I get to clipping them. I have a place near the phone on the counter where I put mail that I need to tend to ASAP. The rest of what I keep goes in the bill folder - and we'll talk about that later this week... or whenever I make myself blog again. :)

I actually have some other things I'd like to share here, and hopefully that will happen soon. Right now though, and the only reason I'm able to sneak the moments I need to type this up, we're a household suffering with a stomach bug. My son has it right now, his younger sister had it before he did. It's pretty much creeping it's way through all of us, only one of my children hasn't shown any signs of it yet. The husband even had it - so you know it's bad! My stomach is in knots and so I'm on day 3 of the triple-S diet (soup, saltines, and seven-up!) So far, I'm not retching, and I'm hoping it stays that way.