Finance - some random thoughts

I have long had a Financial & Legal folder. The JD example equivalent would be 20-29 Finance. But on a personal level, what is ‘Finance’? I presume it to mean ‘financial’ - and I think some categories are more obvious than others. Investing, purchase receipts, banking, taxes, loans. Those are definitely financial at their core. But what about Insurance? Retirement, are their aspects that are not financial? Think of all your app and service monthly payments. The payments are financial, but the services and apps are not necessarily so.

I probably overthink this…

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It depends how your system is set up. Remember, your thinking is supposed to go like this:

  1. I need to find a thing! It’s my tax return from 2018.

  2. I’ll open my file system because I know it’s going to be there.

  3. Now, I have at most ten areas that it can be in. Which one is it?

    • At this point, if we’ve designed our system properly, there is one and only one obvious place to look. It doesn’t matter if it’s called ‘Finance’ or whatever, the point is that the other areas are all called something that clearly is not where you want to look.
  4. You’re now in an area, and you repeat the process with the at most ten categories.

  5. Success.

Ties in with the conversation about a ‘miscellaneous’ folder. Miscellaneous is fine as long as the system above doesn’t break down.

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This is how I currently have my Finance & Legal section set up.

Of course, it’s all subject to change, but at the moment it’s working quite well.

CleanShot 2021-03-27 at 11.24.19@2x

Is Vehicle part of Finance? Probably not really - but in my mind it is. so I put it there.

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YESSSSSSSSS

:fist:

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I have cars in Finance also! If it is an object that costs me money, it’s likely in my finance folder.

Aren’t depreciating assets fun?!

Doesn’t that cover almost all things?

I’ve designed my life around not owning a car. Yeah, I might pay a bit more in rent because I live close to the city, but now I can walk or cycle most places and I’m not paying $10k/year to keep a tonne of rusting metal on the driveway.

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Not for me. I don’t include people that cost me money (personal, family), job stuff, education or medical (not ‘objects’), but do include housing, cars, etc. I guess ‘computer’ is separate, so that’s an exception.