Step 1: Get Organized

Since currently my filing system for our financial state has been a big ol' cardboard box where I have just been dumping things the first thing I need to do is get honest about our finances.  I grabbed the box and drug it over to the paper shredder and went to town shredding anything old, out dated or that I knew had been paid off.

I was left with a small pile. Okay I can breathe now.  Not so bad!  I know each paper has a digit on it that adds up to a much much bigger number, but having less paper clutter has helped calm my nerves.  I feel a little more like this is manageable.

Next I took a notebook to designate as our family financial notebook.  I got the idea from another blog writer that follows Dave Ramsey, Dittle Dattle.  Now I am a nerd and a perfectionist and I could get all hog wild and spend hours creating a major work of art with this financial notebook, but the point is simplicity.  I want to create a notebook that works, that is easy and that I won't spend hours on developing only to abandon the thing once I'm done because it doesn't work in real life.  Frustrated Perfectionists are all nodding their heads in total sympathy for me right now.  Getting out of this hole means changing behaviors!

So here I am a stack of bills and a notebook....now what?  I'm going to step away for bit while I work up the courage to add up the total....