How Much Time Do You Spend Managing Your Finances?

Mixed Up Money spends one day a month managing her finances where she batches all of her financials tasks into a day at either the first or the end of the month.

I don't do the one day thing, but I can see the benefit of batching all the tasks at once. But to spend an entire day working on money stuff would be a bummer (especially since it would probably kill a Saturday) so I prefer to spread my tasks out. To that end, here's what I do:

• Once a week I pay all the bills received from the previous week, then update Quicken, adding in all my credit card charges, checks written, etc. as well as updating my stock values. This takes maybe an hour and involves charges/checks from my wife too.
• Once a month I review my investments to see how they are performing. I also update my real estate checking accounts (looking over revenue and expenses for the month) as well as any accounts earning interest or dividends. This might take an hour or so as well.
• There are various other tasks that hit now and then, but for the administrative parts of managing my finances, that's about it. Maybe five hours a month total.

That's how I manage my money. I try to keep it simple and quick. What's your process?

Comments

[Benjaminmetzler]

Anywhere from 30-45 minutes a week. Sometimes less, rarely more.

My habit is to sit down some time on Sunday in front of Quicken, download and review all of the transactions for the week (via Quicken downloads), pay any bills coming up the next week either via check or credit card (including paying off my credit card balance each week), reconciling accounts I received statements for, and entering my paycheck (2x/month). Goes by pretty quickly and seamlessly.

That takes care of over 10 credit cards, multiple investment accounts (including IRA and 401K), and four checking accounts at three different banks.

[Jon @ Be Net Worthy]

Ha, I follow the same process as Benjamin! I usually sit down on Sunday nights after dinner and go through the inbox. Pay bills, put in my paychecks, download everything in Quicken, etc...

Twice a year I'll do a deeper dive on my investment portfolio and figure out if I need to re-allocate anything.

The process runs pretty smoothly.

[MikeC]

I update Quicken daily by downloading all of my accounts. I spend maybe 5-10 minutes a day just reviewing new entries and then another half hour to hour weekly reviewing reports, budgets and investments. Also, as soon as a bill is received, usually online, I schedule the payment in my checking account online for the due date and manually enter it into Quicken (usually by just posting a reminder that was previously set up). Those manually posted entries are later matched with the downloaded entry from the bank when it is paid. It all runs very smoothly.

All told I probably spend 8-10 hours a month at it.

[Xyz from Financial Path.]

I use personal capital to track everything. I would say I spend about 1h a month looking over it.

[LimeyJunior]

I've done mostly on Mint and pretty good. Every now and then they have some quirks