Clearing Up Your Money Clutter

Money is one of the things that we seem to stress about the most and, as a result, avoid. Sound familiar?

As we enter the countdown to the end of the summer chaos, I’m starting to take some time to organize and declutter. And clearing up money clutter is part of that process.

This week on the podcast, I’m sharing with you a training I did in the Inner Circle, Clearing Money Clutter. It will help you to find hidden money in your life, get your bills paid up and planned out, and just feel lighter.

No one likes money chaos hanging around, but when we don’t regularly check in it’s really easy to feel it poking at you. So get a notepad and pen handy and get ready to feel so much better about your bank account and pocketbook!

Links and Resources:

• Join Inner Circle

Time Stamps:
[0:12] – Summer chaos
[1:16] – Feeling the pull to create more calm
[3:40] – What is money clutter?
[5:55] – Avoid the ADHD tax
[7:30] – Stay in touch with your money
[10:55] – Small steps make a big impact

Transcription:

Amber Hawley 0:01
Business owners are increasingly being pulled in so many directions, feeling like they aren’t reaching their full potential in business and life despite their type aways. With my background as a therapist, entrepreneur, and as a.com dropout with ADHD, I interview and coach high achieving business owners like you who want to stop struggling for success by using psychological systems, strategies, and the occasional care for entation. This is the easily distracted entrepreneur, your place to slay overwhelm perfectionism and shiny object syndrome so that you can get done what matters most to you.

Amber Hawley 0:41
Hello, hello, my fellow cultivators have calm. I was gonna say calm before the storm, but the reality is for so many, with school aged children, the last month I feel is total chaos, the last month of school of summer, summers can be wonderful, you can have a bit of a slower schedule perhaps. Or maybe you’re one of those people where you’re like my scheduled and change, I just now have to deal with the chaos of figuring out day to day, week to week, hour to hour, what to do with my kids. I think we’re a little bit in that we’re in the countdown of excitement for a little more routine, even though it is fun, you definitely get to have, we have more adventures in summer, we do things a little bit differently, we, you know, are a little more lacks on the boundaries. But just like a vacation, it’s nice to come home and have some of that structure.

Amber Hawley 1:44
So we are looking forward to September, at least in our household. And it’s interesting, because I think, you know, there are a few times a year where naturally I feel this pull to, like clean things up, declutter, create more calm kind of reset things. And August feels like one of those months for me, it’s usually like, March April ish, November and August, which makes sense, right? Like November is, you know, early November getting ready before the holiday season, which tends to be a little chaotic. And then you know, kind of that spring cleaning getting ready for May, which is always kind of crazy. And then summer, and then preparing for back to school. Even if you don’t have school aged children, I feel like there’s just flow that there. It just seems like September, a lot of things are happening. December a lot of things are happening. May a lot of things are happening. So I think regardless of you know, having children or not, I kind of notice that those are those are my own rhythms, I will say.

Amber Hawley 2:57
So when thinking about that, I was like, Okay, well, if I’m going to be working on kind of cleaning things up and decluttering, then perhaps I should talk about it, because it might be useful to you as well. And so today, I wanted to talk a little bit about how to clear your money clutter. As we’ve talked a lot over this summer with different money and financial professionals, and experts. And just kind of you know, talking about money mindset and how to take care of your money in your business, it’s just something that’s super important, then also kind of clearing the money clutter, because when we reduce clutter, whether that be physical, emotional, mental or the other, then it helps us feel more organized helps us feel more on top of things. It feels less chaotic. So we’re going to go through five steps to clearing your money clutter. So I did a program for a to be a money breakthrough certified coach. And this is one of the exercises that’s recommended in that program. So you know something is money clutter because it feels unfinished, unresolved, messy or complicated. And perhaps it’s something you’ve been avoiding. That’s usually an indication as well that there’s money clutter happening. So your first step is clearing up with people who owe you money. So write down every company or person who owes you money and the amount they owe, and then make a plan to contact each of those companies or people and follow up on where your money’s at.

Amber Hawley 4:45
I’m gonna say this is probably for most people, the one that’s the hardest that they avoid, because there can be a lot of money mindset stuff that comes up and it can be really hard to follow up with people and remind them have balanced do. So this one is a toughy. But right at least take it step by step, write the list first, get all of that information. And then you may have to get a little bit of support or develop a plan that will help you actually follow up with the people. If this is something that kind of triggers you, or causes you a lot of stress, number two, clearing up your bills. So if you have bills that are kind of all over the place, or you don’t really have a system yet for collecting all of the bills that you owe, I recommend getting a folder, labeling it bills to be paid. And then collecting all of those statements if you actually still have statements, and put them all in the folder, so that you can go through them and actually start paying them. This can be really helpful for those one off bills that you get. And those things that you’re like, oh, yeah, I need to sign up Susie for soccer, or whatever else kind of things that pop up that are usually outside the norm, and have all of that in one place. So then you can organize it.

Amber Hawley 6:20
Now that this kind of goes with tip number three, or step number three, which is schedule your payments, I’m a huge fan of scheduling all of your payments on auto pay, especially for my neurodivergent peeps, it is so much to have to remember to pay your bills on time. And we don’t want to pay that additional ADHD tax as they call it, where we actually have the money in our accounts and we just forget to pay them. So we want to make sure we’re not doing that. So I anything that’s like reoccurring, I absolutely schedule it, if it’s an auto pay kind of situation, for bills that vary are variable. And I do this both personally and professionally. For bills that are variable, I think it’s important to set either like a weekly time where you go in and pay all of your bills. So that way, there’s you’re doing it on a consistent basis. Or you can set reminders in your calendar. Because I know for me, I get a few invoices at the start of the month that aren’t the same amount every single month. And so like having something on the calendar to remind me to go and pay that invoice. Because the reality is, if I don’t see the email, if it falls below the fold, then I’m gonna forget about it. If I happen to see the email, I can pay it right away. And that’s great. But having some kind of backup system so that you don’t forget. And all of a sudden, you know, again, you’re days or weeks late with something. The nice thing about having that weekly money date with yourself is that again, you can catch all of those variable things. But it also keeps you in touch with your money. So you are winning, it’s a week to week it doesn’t it’s not so overwhelming.

Amber Hawley 8:14
And then you can kind of see like, you can track how much you’ve been spending, you can track, you know what’s coming in. This is a great time, if you don’t have a bookkeeper, that you could go in and reconcile. If you’re using like QuickBooks or a different program, like I use the five minute, five minute bookkeeper going in and making sure that all of the transactions are accounted for. And then on the personal side as well, like tracking things that are coming up and making sure you’re staying on track with all of your personal expenses. Number four, step number four is use any gift cards you have. So gather all of those unused gift cards and gift certificates and cash them in either use them spend them make a priority to actually utilize those. Or there are some places where you can actually sell your gift cards or trade them in. Or maybe if there’s somebody you know, and you’re like, Hey, I’m never gonna make it to this place. Why don’t you go ahead and have my gift card and do something good for others and pay it forward. I think there’s nothing worse than that feeling.

Amber Hawley 9:30
Have you had a gift card for something and then by the time you go to use it, it’s either expired, which some places that you know, the gift cards don’t expire, but or my experience has been the place has gone out of business, and I’m missed my chance to use it. So it’s just one of those things where we have money lingering around and we’re just clearing it all up. So gather all your gift cards. The last one is the last step is gather all All your loose money. So gather all your change. And all that random money you have laying around in random drawers or in purses that you’ve been, you know, switching up and going between just wherever all that random money is gather it all up. And you can exchange all your change for bigger bills, you can have it all in one place, so that you actually know how much you have. Because you might have more than you think. And then use it use it, you can use it to pay off some debt, or use it to have like a fun night out like a date night or something fun for yourself. But sometimes, when it’s all spread out all over, we don’t realize all we have. And again, it’s about utilizing your money and having clarity, less clutter, having awareness of everything that you have. And that feels really satisfying. So those are my five steps to clearing your money clutter. And you know, hopefully feeling like you got something accomplished in August that makes you feel a little more on top of things.

Amber Hawley 11:14
I think it’s also important to remember that sometimes it’s these small steps that we take that have a big impact on lessening our overwhelm and just feeling, as I said more on top of things. This is also a great activity that you could do during our weekly co working sessions in the inner circle membership. There are so many people that use those weekly sessions to focus on their money and have that accountability so that they stay on track with all of their finances. People use it for a myriad of things. But I think sometimes doing these decluttering or organizational tasks that are a little outside the norm. Having other people on that call with you with a little bit of accountability helps you stay focused. And now is a great time to join the membership, not just because we have some pretty cool trainings coming up. But also in September 1, the price of the membership will be going up. So now is your chance to lock in the rate of $49 a month and it is month to month. So there’s no long term obligation if you decide this isn’t something that works for you. But you do get a monthly workshop, monthly group coaching and weekly co working sessions. In addition to our quarterly goal planning workshops, it’s a ton of support for your business and for creating sustainable practices to help eliminate burnout and overwhelm. So head on over to Amberhawley.com/innercircle for more information.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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