One of the key elements in getting yourself out of debt is – organization. I’ve talked to many people who find themselves so anal and organized in parts of their lives which carry little impact on their future like keeping the garage floor swept at all times. Yet if you look at their finances it is chaos!

These people I have a special soft spot for… because it use to be me! My computer for example. For whatever reason I’ve always kept my hard drive organized and can find things quickly. But, walk into my office you’ll find papers stacked everywhere – this included the bills.

When I began my journey out of debt I discovered one reason for the debt was my total lack of organization. Who wants to face a mess? I told myself things were filed but the system existed more along the lines of… I’ll get to it later. Bills would be late many times because I did not pay attention to when they were due.

Listening to audio one day I learned a very simple concept that changed my life and not just in the money department.

This simple “idea” helped me get organized, on paper, in filing cabinets, with finances and in life overall.

The Organization Concept of Pain or Pleasure

If the truth be told we all would love to spend our days sitting under a palm tree on a sandy beach watching the waves roll in – that would be pleasure! For others pleasure may be going to a ball game, getting together with friends or movie night with the family. The simple enjoyable pleasures of life.

For myself the lack of organization played a pivotal part in my daily life resulting in pain. Once the connection was made between pain and pleasure being a part of the disorganization in my life… I tackled pain with focused intensity. Ever so slowly life started to become much more organized without much effort.

Most of us want to have pleasure in our life but I focused on pain! I vowed to start getting rid of the pain in my life. The less “pain” the more “pleasure.” The outcome has been transformational.

Let me give a few examples:

Clearing the Desk!

One of the first things I did was clear out my desk… on top and in the drawers. This also included the filing cabinets. If you’ve read any of those organizational books they tell you to only handle the paper once.

With a garbage can and shredder near by, each piece of paper got a look and a decision made on it – throw it, file it or handle it.

It wasn’t long before the discovery of long lost papers, notes and invoices less than 3 feet from my hand. We got rid papers wasting space plus causing clutter! Not everything went into the can or shredder, some items needed action!

When something financial, a bill, credit card, insurance, etc was “discovered” it simply went into a pile which would get a more complete review later on. This also went on with my hard drive as I purged, backed up and organized things to clean the clutter out as well.

As my wife and I (by the way she is organized) started going through all the bills and papers we took the time to write down the balance, due date, minimum payment, and interest rate. We did this for credit cards, insurance, monthly bills, etc.

As all the file folders took shape we went through each one broking them into current year and archived (past years). Handling things became easier. Everything had its place.

The next step involved going through each file and looking at “what we were buying.” This included each line item on phone bills, insurance policies, cable bills or any bill. If we did not understand a charge we picked up the phone to understand the bill completely. Then we asked the question… Could we get rid of feature or service we bought each month and never used or took full advantage of.

This one exercise saved us almost $250 per month

With things in place from clearing clutter we could look at our debt to get a true picture of where we were and develop a spending plan to start eliminating debt. We had an additional $250 to begin adding to balances.

When teaching others about finance and the pain/pleasure principal I use this example.

The old bank account!

My father opened a bank account for me at a credit union when I was a young kid. The account was 30 years old. For years I’ve needed to change the mailing address on the account. It still went to my mother’s house.

Following my “less pain” mantra I finally took action. I cashed in the 103.17 in the account. Now what was the pain? The pain was:

• My mother would ask me about the account
• My wife would ask me about the account
• I would ask myself about the account
• The envelop needed to be opened
• The information read
• The statement needed to be filed
• The money was just sitting making no real interest
• A statement for taxes needed filing
• Time wasted dealing with something giving little or no value

The way to get rid of the pain was to cancel the account and take the money to pay down debt.

The end result was less pain and more pleasure. I’ve continued to keep looking for ways to get rid of the pain in my life… try it! It could change your life!