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Money Management Shortcuts
5 Steps to Help Busy Parents Stay on Top of Their Finances By Cara J. Stevens
I'm positive my daughter got her brains from me, because my husband still has his and mine seem to be gone. Before I became a mom two and a half years ago, I was a reliable person, always arriving early and paying my bills on time at least that's how I choose to remember it.
Since my brains were somehow transferred to my daughter, I'm a completely different person. While friends and family seem to appreciate this quirk, creditors don't. For instance, the mortgage company was a fan of mine the month I paid our home mortgage bill twice; however, the bank who fronted the money out of our depleted account wasn't as impressed.
Becoming a parent can do some weird things to our brains, inducing a permanent case of absentmindedness. "When our first baby was born I forgot to pay a credit card bill and a cell phone bill, and they both got temporarily suspended for a while, and I didn't even realize it," says Julie*, a stay-at-home mom.
But many have survived and lived to tell the tale, and here are a few shortcuts they've used to make money management easier for the busy parent.
"One of the problems we all have is that we feel that life is totally out of control," says Donna Smallin, author of Organizing Plain and Simple (Storey Books, 2002) and Webmaster for www.unclutter.com. "One of the benefits of getting organized is that it makes you feel more in control of your life, but you don't have to stop everything to get organized. You just have to start and stick with it. Even five minutes of organizing a day adds up to two hours and 20 minutes a month, and that's quite a lot of organizing."
"Managing your personal finances is a total issue for a lot of people," says Susan Hirshman, financial planning strategist at JPMorgan Fleming Asset Management in New York City. "The No. 1 thing is organization and discipline; it's putting a little energy in early to have a good outcome."