If this article prompts you to spend one of the most beneficial hours you’ve ever had, then no. There are only four things that you will do in this hour. Give it a try.

1) Organize your important papers. Things like deeds, mortgages, leases, life insurance details, warrantees and other things. Put them all in one place and anything new that comes in should be put there directly.

2) Start a tax folder.  You need your W2, and you won’t get that until January or February, but there are things that should go together to help you get organized for when you do your taxes. Things like the tax preparer’s bill from last year, educational expenses, and receipts from the home depot. With all of these things together in one folder or box, it’ll be much easier to find a spot to put these types of things when you get them. Here is a more complete list if you need one.

3) Start using bill pay at your bank. For more on this check here.

4) Set up a budget. For more on this check here.

OK, so it might have taken you an hour and ten minutes, but I promise that you will be much more prepared for the future. If you haven’t started this list yet, do it. Don’t hesitate.

It is great to have multiple accounts. There is some time spent maintaining the balances of each, but that is far outweighed by the organization that it allows. Each of these separate buckets creates a bit of formality to deal with when we want to make purchases and this makes it a conscious decision.

With online savings accounts, they are easily set up once you have one, and you can open or close them as you please on the fly. I feel that the more you have, the better, and because of all of the compartmentalization, I find myself really surprised when I take a look at the total of all of the accounts. It’s nice to know that if something were to really go wrong, I could dip into other sections if it was necessary.

If you don’t want to take it to this extreme, you should really have at least two accounts. Start out with a rainy day fund and then once this is at capacity, move some into a account to be used to save up for something. Whether it is a vacation, or a house, it is a good way to keep things apart on paper and in your mind.

Each sheet has deposits in one column, and ten columns for expenses. These columns have headings for the category. Some of the categories that I have used in the past are: Housing, Car, Credit Cards, Debit(ATM), Utilities, Gas, Electricity, Cable, Vacation Savings, Gifts, Misc. You can customize them to match your spending habits.

The sheet has tabs for each month of the year, and each month has rows corresponding to the days of each month. So if you pay $99 to the cable company on the 4th of each month, then in the Cable or utilities column, you would put $99 in the 4th row down. This will paint a picture of what you spend on this category for the month. If you look at the total tab, you can see what you have forecasted for the entire year.

Download the sheet and log into your online banking, take a look at the current expense headings and make any adjustments to fit your own. Input your paychecks and expenses for the past few months. This will give you a clear picture. When you really benefit from it is when you have the next few months mapped out so that you know when money will be going out. If the values change from month to month, always underestimate deposits and overestimate expenses. This will allow you to never reach a zero balance. Once all of this is done, check back as often as you need to enter the correct values of the bills you are paying or the paychecks you receive. The value in your Balance column should always equal the balance in your checking account on that given day.