These 5 admin life hacks will make adulting a whole lot easier. Oh, and they will save you money too. Win win!
Adulting 101
Adulting can be hard. At least that’s what I heard, because I never really had an issue with that. I was one of those weird kids who was looking forward to being a grown up, and actually liked it when I reached adulthood.
You’re finally there, you have outgrown the years that you have to obey school and your parents, only to discover… more rules.
A lot of adults want to go back to being a teenager because life turned out to be more complicated than they assumed. I can’t blame them, you know. There are so many things to look out for and so many bills to pay.
The dreaded admin
One of the things that troubles many new adults is admin. You’re finally there, you have outgrown the years that you have to obey school and your parents, only to discover… more rules.
Welcome to the world of:
- paying bills
- selecting the best insurance
- tax declarations
All of a sudden you need to start keeping a file of paychecks, contracts, bank statements and much more. Yikes!
And do you know the worst thing? Not following up on your admin properly will cost you money. For some reason I picked up these adulting skills pretty fast, and I came up with a couple of admin life hacks that will for sure help you to save money.
5 admin life hacks that will help you save money
Use the communication field in bank transfers
Whenever you do a bank transfer I recommend that you use the communication field. In this field you fill in the reference you find on invoices, but you can also use it for admin purposes. Write a memo that will help you remember the what, where and when of the expense.
Example: after dinner with friends you pay back the one who handled the check. That little “dinner with Sarah and Jane” note in the communication field will make sure you’re not in the dark about what leaves your account.
Use an expense tracker
An expense tracker is a great way to keep track of what comes in and what goes out of your account. You might be surprised to see how many of those expenses you forgot. I have designed an Excel template that you can download for free. The tracker will not only show you how much you spend in which categorie, it will also tell you how much you can save and/or invest.
Download my free expense tracker below ⬇️
Digitalize your admin with Dropbox
Eliminate paper, seriously. I’m always surprised to see how many letters and invoices I still receive through the letter box. All this paper causes chaos inside my head, so I digitalize everything. I personally use Dropbox (not sponsored) because it has the feature to take a picture of a document and convert it to a PDF. Then I assign the document to a folder (e.g. ‘insurance’, ‘house loan’…). Whenever I need something I just use the search function and I’m able to find it within a couple of minutes.
Set reminders in your calendar for regular payments
In our hectic daily lives it’s not hard to forget about recurring payments that don’t happen every month. I have subscriptions that need to be paid yearly, and in order not to forget about them I set reminders in my calendar. Whenever I have a due date coming up I get a reminder a week or two beforehand, so I can take the cost into account.
Open multiple accounts
Keeping all of your money in one account is a really bad idea:
- you don’t have a clear oversight
- you have no idea what you can spend
- you don’t now how much savings you have
Open a couple of different accounts to organize your finances. You should at least have a savings account for your emergency fund. Then there’s a brokerage account for investing, and I even have a separate checking account to save up money for larger short term expenses.
Don’t go crazy either, but look for the structure that best suits your needs.