Thoughts: One of my primary goals this weekend was to finally sort through and organize (or toss out and shred) all of the mail, receipts, and miscellaneous paperwork that has piled up in the past few weeks.

Okay, okay…so maybe it was actually the past 12 months if you want to be picky and count back to the first unfiled, dated retirement IRA statement from March 2004 that was in the stack.

It isn’t as if I’m behind on my bills or unaware of my financial holdings. My Microsoft Money Deluxe 2004 personal finance software is so updated that I can tell you my exact net worth down to the pennies in my coin jar with a few mouse clicks. I pay my bills at least 10 days ahead of their due dates, and check my balances regularly for unauthorized transactions and bank errors.

In fact, it’s the very efficiency of Microsoft Money that has been my downfall when it comes to all the paperwork.

The only bill I have to pay by hand is my rent check every month. Everything else–cable, water/trash, electricity, gym membership, credit cards, car insurance, renter’s insurance, etc.–is handled online through the respective payee’s website, or using integrated billpay through Money and my bank account. My statements are pulled into Money daily as well, so I don’t have to enter the transactions by hand, either.

So even though a few of my bills still arrive in paper hardcopy, I pay them online anyway, so I don’t even need to OPEN the envelopes! Ditto for my bank statements.

The end result of all of this automation is that I get about 10 lbs of paper in the mail every month that I don’t even have to open in order to keep my account registers accurate to the last penny. This makes dealing with my mail somewhat low on the totem pole of priorities in my life, which is why I had a full tall kitchen garbage bag of paper to chuck out Monday morning after spending most of Sunday sorting everything out and filing away my receipts and statements from 3/2004 to the present.

I can’t wait until ALL of my accounts give me a paperless statement option. With computer storage so cheap, the mailed statements are just a time-consuming, environmentally-wasteful nuisance, as was my brief flirtation with Sunday home newspaper delivery. Don’t get me wrong–it was nice to have the Sunday paper at half off AND delivered to my door. I got coupons and sales ads which certainly saved me some money. However, I also got tempted to buy things I didn’t really need just because I was exposed to them through the ads, and the lure of a “bargain” was too great. I was also suckered into picking up pre-packaged foods that I didn’t particularly need either, just because I could get 50 cents off with a coupon. Once I started BFL, I realized that the coupon section was pretty useless to me for food purchases. And looking around my apartment, I also realized that I didn’t need any more *stuff* either, so why bother getting the paper when I could check the news and ads online? Most weeks I was so slammed and busy that I never even took the paper out of the bag anyhow.

So this morning my trash bin contained two huge bags of useless paper, one of mailings and one of newspapers, a good 20 lbs worth of dead tree. I’m glad I finally got the task checked off on my To Do list, but I wish that all of the hassle weren’t necessary.

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Nutrition: SGX Training Day eating pattern
(Details omitted by request)

Regular (Non-SGX) Daily Supplements: multivitamin with iron, calcium 500 + D
Water for yesterday: 16 cups

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Workout:
12:00 PM Upper body/chest workout

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The Awful Truth:
1. I was pretty lazy this weekend. No workouts.

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Brownie Points:
1. Increased weight in tricep pushdown to 90 lbs (Yeah, yeah, still wimpy )
2. Stewed up some chicken.

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Short-term Goals:
1. Take notes on home buying and investment from Suze Orman’s Money Book for the Young, Fabulous, and Broke audio book
2. Get back on a regular schedule this week.
3. Organize the sewing/drafting table.
4. Pick up groceries.