A messy and disorganized home can be stressful. The same can be said for your personal finances. From disorganized bills to messy budgets— it’s not only stressful, but it can also cost you less savings and push you deeper into debt.
Know your money habits. Having cluttered and disorganized finances increase the chance of missing payment deadlines, accumulating fees, and poor spending habits.
One way to clean and declutter your personal finances is to go paperless. Whether you’re a freelancer organizing your work payments or just want to declutter your bills and bank statements, here are various reasons why you should go completely paperless with your personal finances.
1. Increase Efficiency
We all want to be efficient and productive in our daily tasks, including in organizing our personal finances. Completing, filing, managing, and keeping track of your finance paperwork can create a severe strain on your time.
However, when you go paperless, you can reduce the time spent on paperwork so you can focus more on critical, valuable tasks. Completing and filing paperwork is also simpler with new technologies.
For instance, when doing bank transactions, most providers will require authentication such as your signature before proceeding. Traditionally, banks will send documents over email or mail, requiring you to print, sign, scan, and send them back. This time-consuming task can be eliminated with the use of digital documents and eSignatures.
The bank simply sends you a digital document that you can sign online and send it right away, ensuring faster and more efficient processing of your finances.
If you’re looking for a reliable platform that allows you to sign, send, track and collect eSignatures in minutes, you can try jSign.com.
2. Reduce Mails
Sorting through stacks of mail probably won’t take hours. However, it’s still time-consuming. And when you’re done sorting through your mails, you have to either shred it, throw it away or file it. Isn’t it better to go paperless and reduce the amount of mail you receive in the first place?
You can opt out of receiving paper copies of important documents such as utility bills, bank statements, and even invoices. Instead, you can ask them to receive these documents via email or an online account.
3. Enhanced Security
Physical paper can be a significant liability. Sensitive files can easily be compromised and important documents can be misfiled, stolen, or destroyed.
A paperless approach offers a much higher level of security for sensitive data such as your bank accounts. With the right document management system, you can expect numerous encryptions, safeguards, and banking-level security measures to help protect your documents.
In addition, cloud-based technology offers backup in case of an emergency. For instance, if your home suffered a disaster such as a fire or flooding, you won’t lose any critical data or documents.
4. Easier Access
Have you ever experienced a situation when you require some important documentation, but you forgot or left the copy at home or your office? If so, then you know how frustrating it can be.
Unlike traditional paper-based documentation, a paperless system for your personal finances allows you to access critical data from anywhere at any time. Whether you’re traveling out of town or doing groceries, cloud-based storage means you only need internet access to find the necessary information.
5. Cost-Saving
Going paperless can also help in reducing the cost of your finance paperwork, especially if you’re a freelancer.
The need for printing, physical storage, and postage will be eliminated. This way you can save cost on paper, ink, and other materials as well as your time in processing your which you can use for more productive tasks.
6. Eco-Friendly
If you’re worried about your impact on mother earth, then reducing your reliance on paper allows you to create a more sustainable lifestyle and management of your personal finances.
Even with recycling, statistics show that global paper use has increased up to 400 percent in the last 4 decades. In the US alone, the usage of paper products has reached 208 million tons. That’s about 700 pounds of paper per individual every year. Not only that, but the US cuts down about 68 million trees every year to produce paper products.
Beyond paper use, printers, ink, and other materials are harmful to the environment as well. In fact, it takes over 3 quarts of oil to create an inkjet cartridge and laser printer. Ink and printers also contain harmful chemicals. If improperly disposed of, it can pollute soil and water, contributing to ecological damage.
So, if you want to reduce your carbon footprint and negative impact on the earth, paperless is the path to take.
Reducing paper usage is an eco-conscious choice for a sustainable lifestyle, but extending your environmental impact further can include opting for cost-effective refurbished electronics similar to refurbished all-in-one computers. This minimizes electronic waste and saves you money compared to purchasing new devices.
Conclusion
People are now starting to realize that paper is an expensive and inefficient way to manage their personal finances. From entrepreneurs to simple housewives, people are now transitioning to digital document management systems for a more streamlined and smarter way to handle personal finances.
