One of the most crucial components of financial success is financial organization. In this episode, Wade Reed explains how to become more financially organized by sharing an example of his desk and file drawer. He also presents how his Financial Organization Toolkit and Planner can significantly elevate and expand your strategies.
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Financial Organization (O.S.O.M. Method)
In this episode, I want to talk to you about the crucial component of financial success, which is to be financially organized. “Wait, what? Do you want to talk about organization, Wade?” Actually, yes, I do because I have been in this industry for nearly two decades. What I have found to be true is that the more organized you are, the easier it is to make financial transactions, the faster you can act and get deals done, and speed means more money.
The more organized you are, the easier it is to make financial transactions. The faster you act and get deals done, the more money you can make.
Did you hear that? Wealth acceleration. We want to speed up how things are going. I’m pretty excited about this. Over the years, as I’ve worked with my clients, I have found that as we get financially organized, they’ve come back multiple times. “Wade, guess what? I had this new transit action for a piece of real estate.” “I had a refinance of my house. I bought a new house.” “I started a new business.” “I needed to refinance my business loan.”
My lender came back and said, “I have never had somebody get their financial documents to me so quickly. You’re the first person to have it done on the same day.” Usually, it takes weeks for people to get their financial documents, which delays the transaction, which means the cost of money. Guys, time matters. Time is money, literally, when it comes to financial transactions. The faster we can transact, when it’s the right transaction, the more likely we are to get a deal done.
What’s fascinating to me about this is everyone I know has a junk drawer of some kind. This happens to be a drawer in the very desk at which I’m sitting. One of my drawers is disorganized. I know pretty well what’s in there. It’s not important things. It’s just knick-knacks and things I might need periodically a couple of times a year.
My desk has some paper strewn about it. You might think, “Wade, you’re talking about organization. Why are you not fully organized?” I’m human, too, okay? We all have these times. We’re always living in chaos. Things are constantly moving from order to chaos. There’s a term called entropy, which comes from the world of physics. I’m pretty sure it’s physics. Everything’s moving toward entropy, meaning disorganization.
It takes some effort. That’s probably why you and everyone I know have some junk drawer in your life. You just don’t want to put it away. You’re not ready to do it. You have something else that’s more important or more pressing. I get it. All of us have this disorganization going on, but the pile of papers you see is a temporary thing.
Some bills need to be paid. Some paperwork needs to be looked at. Until I’m ready to look at it on the day that I like to look at it, which is typically once a week on Sundays, I just let it sit there. When I’m done with that, I throw it away or file it in my filing cabinet. Here’s what a financial organization looks like. The next slide is the next drawer in my desk with key office supplies. 
Pins, it’s got some paper clips, it’s got a pencil sharpener, it’s got a stapler remover, it’s got some cutting devices, sometimes I need to cut paper or my kids do for projects. I’ve got that there and I’ve got some stamps. Up on the shelf behind me, I’ve got a place for all my envelopes. I don’t do a lot of mailing, but when I do, I know exactly where stuff is.
Now, the filing cabinet, this is miraculous. I guess I grew up with a filing cabinet. My mom was pretty good at this stuff. I picked up on some good habits here. I’ve got things labeled and somewhat color-coded. Differentiation of colors can be helpful because green is typically money-oriented. Red is a mix of things. White or manila envelopes are a mix of things.
Honestly, I suppose I could be better with the coordination of the color coding, but just the fact that there’s some differentiation of color helps my eyes catch things a little easier than if they’re all manila envelopes. That might drive some of you crazy who are seeing this because you’ll say, “Gosh, if I’m going to get organized, I want it all to be in the right color in the right order.”
Now all the blues together, all the reds together, all the oranges together, all the greens together, all the manila together, or forget the colors. I just want it all to be manila envelopes and manila folders. That’s totally up to you. That’s the personal side of this stuff, but getting organized, I know the sections of my drawer, the back of the drawer has certain insurance files, and the front of the drawer has banking files, receipts, and important things.
On the other side, I have tax documents and so forth. Not a lot of you are going to do paper files. I still have some stuff that is made of paper. I like to have some physical copies. Sometimes, that’s a little easier than jumping on my computer and getting online and looking at it, but I have that as well. I have a Financial Organization Toolkit.
If you want help knowing how to get organized, particularly on the digital side, I have a Financial Organization Toolkit I can share with you. On this page, you’ll be able to download a PDF that I’ve created to help you know how to go about organizing your financial files. This is helpful and it’s simple. That’s the power of it. Powerful things are often simple things, the easiest things. I’d encourage you to grab this and get some ideas on how to get organized simply.
One of the things that it will do is give you a template. The template will help you know how to get things organized digitally in Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, or whatever it is that you’re using so that you know where things are at. Now, there’s a bonus thing here that you might want to grab onto as well. All my clients get this as part of my paid coaching with them. It’s a spreadsheet. I call it the Financial Scorecard (now called Total Wealth Organizer).
It is a financial organizer and a financial profile, and it breaks down everything that you have in those digital files into actual numbers in different tabs. That’s something that I typically reserve for clients, but I’m considering releasing it as a product available. There are no promises yet on that, but it may be available when you’re reading this as a paid product in addition to that free Financial Organization Toolkit.
You can get everything organized from those documents like the insurance, the investments, the tax documents, your bank statements, your credit reports, and all that stuff. We need to know what’s on those things and be able to pull that data into something that organizes them. That’s financial organization.
What about our mindset? What happens when you’re cluttered physically? Usually, it’s a representation of feeling cluttered internally. The money game is largely a mindset game. If our mind is cluttered, and our life is cluttered, then you might be dealing with a lot of clutter in many areas of your life. Maybe you’ve got closets that need to be cleaned out. Maybe you’ve got a disorganized yard. Maybe you’ve got a disorganized garage.
Your bedroom and bathroom, all these different spaces, are often a result of something not going right internally. If we start to clear up our mindset and improve the beliefs we have about life, that we don’t have to live in scarcity and fear and worry, but instead can live in abundance, joy, and happiness, then other areas start to clean up themselves. It’s almost miraculous as well.
I have many clients who have come back and said, “Wade, you know how you started to teach me about doing a daily ritual in the morning? I’ve been doing that. As a byproduct of that, my energy’s better, but also, I just felt inclined to finally clean out that closet.” I’m like, “That’s awesome. Congratulations, I bet that feels good.” They’ll say, “Yes, it feels amazing. My energy’s way up because I’m doing things in an organized manner.”
Not everyone will perfectly resonate with that. I get it. I’m highly detailed. I like things organized in a very simple way. On the other hand, my wife likes to have her desktop full of documents. She doesn’t put it in folders the way I do. Her mind doesn’t think that way. She’s got a more asymmetrical, you might say, way of doing things.
On her computer desktop, she’s got a variety of things that are spread out in different sections of her computer desktop. That can be okay, too, as long as you know where things are at and can quickly access them. Don’t feel stuck like it has to be exactly the way Wade said it has to be. Mine’s just one way that I have found useful to do it.
Start there and then you can adopt other practices as you do things your way and make personal finance personal. That’s a key phrase that I often share with you guys. Personal finance must become personal. You must take it personally. You must have ownership of your decisions. No one else will care more about your money than you do.
We’ll leave the show there for this episode. Guys, get yourselves financially organized, do yourselves a favor. That’s the first step in my four-step process, organize, systemize, optimize, and maximize. If you do organization first, everything else will become much simpler. All right, guys, I wish you well. Thanks for reading. We’ll talk to you in the next one.
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