speaking of new systems

The new year always brings fresh new starts and organization to things in my life.  Probably not enough, but at least things are happening in SOME areas.  So it only seems fitting to tell you about another awesome system that I am loving these days.

Have you heard of Mint.com??  It's a financial site that is FREE - it will pull all of your accounts - checking, savings, student loans, mortgage, everything into one place and track expenses and allow you to set a budget.

I had heard of it a year or so ago, so I checked it out.  I started to put our account information in there, but never really figured it out enough to be able to do our entire budget on there.  So then I was just annoyed by the emails I'd keep getting reminding me of my accounts and stuff.

Then on our craft weekend in December, Mint.com became a topic of conversation, and my friend Lindsay was showing everyone all the cool things it does!  She was a pro at it!  Sometimes that's what I need - someone to just sit and show me how to do it.  I decided I needed to give it another shot.  So I went home and spent some more time figuring it out. We've had a budget system  - but I've needed something less time-consuming.  I wasn't disciplined enough to sit and record all of our spending each day or even each week.  I was always getting so far behind.  And then I'd just get so stressed out about it.   I DO like seeing where every dollar is going, but recording every dollar is not so much fun.

So January was the first month to try everything on Mint.  And I loved it!  So much easier, less time consuming, and I get emails sent to me when we have exceeded a category in our budget - love that too!  And although this hasn't been proven yet - I THINK it's easy enough that I can teach Dave how to do things on it.  We did better on our budget this month than we have in a LONG time!  Maybe it's the new system, maybe it's not.  We'll have to see how February goes.

So far January has brought some great new organization to my life...

a new menu-planning system
a new money/budget system
a new bible-reading system

But that doesn't mean I've mastered them yet. 

Next on the list...
a new house-cleaning and laundry system.
Only problem is that the best system I've come up with is a maid-system. 

 My hubby won't go for that - I've already begged and pleaded.