With the return of the sunshine, you have more energy and more ambition to do a spring clean. Have you ever thought of doing a spring cleaning with your finances?

Pick one of these challenges and see how it makes you feel renewed! 

Subscription Scrub

“Did I really sign up for that subscription? Whoa, that is more expensive than I remember?” Subscription costs add up quickly, and sometimes we forget what we have signed up for. Taking time to review your subscriptions can lower your monthly expenses and simplify your spending. 

• Print copies of your bank and credit card statements. Count how many subscriptions you are spending money on and add up the expenses.
  • Highlight all subscription payments on your statements.
• List the subscriptions you use in order of use. Which ones do you use more? Which ones do you use less?
• Are there any you completely forgot that you were paying for, or that you don’t use anymore?
• Are you paying for any add-ons that you don’t want anymore?
• Talk to yourself or your family about the number and cost of the subscriptions.
  • Talk about decreasing the number of subscriptions your household uses.
• What free subscriptions can people use instead of paid ones? CBC Gem and TVO have free accounts; kids’ programs are commercial-free!
• What subscription costs are other household members willing to take on? Which subscription costs can be shared?
• What about picking one subscription, and everyone watches what they want most on that subscription for six months? After six months, cancel that subscription and pick a different one for everyone to binge from for six months. 
• Cancel subscriptions and add-ons you have decided on. Add up the full cost of the savings!

E-mail Elimination

We tend to sign up for emails with the idea that it will somehow save us money. It may end up encouraging us to overspend or buy things we don’t need or want. These emails can also overwhelm your email and make it difficult to see the emails from the people and places you really want to. 

• Set a timer for a certain number of minutes. This could be five or 20 minutes. 
• Go through a month’s worth of emails in your inbox, junk folder, or deleted folder. 
• Go through the emails you no longer want to receive and find the unsubscribe button. It is usually at or near the bottom of the email. 
• Click the unsubscribe button. It may take you to a website that asks you why you want to unsubscribe or requires you to confirm you want to unsubscribe. Make sure you finish the unsubscribing process. 
• When your timer goes off, STOP. Take a breath. How do you feel? Do you want to set the timer again? Do it! 

Paper Purge

I don’t know why, but it’s so much easier to help someone else organize their paper than it is to deal with a tall, tilting pile of paper. It’s called the leaning Tower of Pulp-a. Get it!? Hahahaha. It can feel daunting to start, but it can help you get more organized and keep your important papers together and where you need them when you need them. 

• Pick somewhere safe to keep your papers. This may be an accordion file, a file box, a binder with a zipper, or a filing cabinet. 
• Go around your house and find all the places you have tucked papers “to deal with later”. Bring them all to one central place, like a dining table or the floor in your bedroom. 
• Designate three spaces for “Keep”, “Shred”, and “Recycle” piles. Having a box or bag ready to put papers to be shredded or recycled directly into can help make the task less daunting at the end. You will thank yourself in three hours from now. 
• Start at the top of the pile and deal with one piece of paper at a time. Don’t think about the paper sticking out halfway down or that pile with the pretty pink paperclip; You will get to them.
• Decide which pile each paper is to go into.
  • Any paper with your personal information, even your name and address, should go into the shred pile if you aren’t going to keep it. 
• Any paper with general information that doesn’t include your name and other personal information can be recycled. 

• Once you have conquered the pile, take a breath. CONGRATULATIONS! YOU DID IT! You are almost done… but not quite. 
• Take them to be recycled at your usual recycling spot.
• If you know someone with a shredder or have one yourself, shred that paper! Doesn’t that feel satisfying? An alternative is to burn the paper in that pile. Make sure you do it somewhere safe. 
• Before you start dealing with the “Keep” pile, decide how you want to organize the remaining papers. Do you want to organize them by date, types of bills, or some other way? Knowing this ahead of time can help you start and progress quickly.
  • Take the “Keep” pile and go through the papers one at a time from top to bottom. Start making piles based on how you decided you would organize the paperwork.

• Once you have the papers in piles, put them into the accordion file, file box, binder, or filing cabinet in a way that makes the most sense to you. 
• Wow! You did it! Keep those files in a safe place that is easy to remember.