How to Handle All Those New Accounts in Your Expanding Financial Life
You could be as organized in your financial life as these colored pencils!
You have just gotten your first job out of college and all of a sudden you’re finding yourself with what feels like one hundred new and different accounts. You’ve potentially found yourself with a new bank account, a new savings account, your new retirement plan account through your employer, maybe a new student loan portal, a new credit card, a car loan portal, and so many more. I know can be overwhelming to keep track of them (heck, I was practically overwhelmed just listing all of those!) - but don’t despair!
You can still keep a *much* better track of your financial life with the help of a few tools - namely something like Mint.com and/or Personal Capital.
Let me tell you why I like tools like this. It’s one reason, and one reason only: tracking your financial progress in one place. Yes, that’s really it. It’s not budgeting, it’s not checking your credit score, it’s not seeing if your paycheck has been deposited (though those are all great habits to get into). These tools are the place where everything comes together and you can see how all of those behaviors are actually making a difference and moving you financially forward.
Just because you now have all of these new accounts does not mean you have to track them all individually. And in fact, you shouldn’t. Tracking everything all together keeps your financial life organized so you can see how each piece fits together. The main ‘metric’ of your personal financial life you can use to track progress is called ‘net worth’. (And no this is not at all your worth as a person! Don’t even get me started on that.)
‘Net worth’ is just a personal finance term for the number that states how much money you have minus how much money you owe. It’s a snapshot in time of what I like to call your ‘personal balance sheet’ and is a measure of your overall financial health. Changing almost any other personal finance-related number, from income, monthly spending, an interest rate on debt to many others, all fall back to the goal of increasing how much money you have (aka increasing net worth). Therefore, a general good guideline to follow is that if you’re doing all those other things ‘right’ - this number should generally* go up over time.
Changing almost any other personal finance-related number, from income, monthly spending, an interest rate on debt to many others, all fall back to the goal of increasing how much money you have (aka increasing net worth).
How something like Mint or Personal Capital can help -
All your financial accounts organized and linked into one place (and help you stay sane to boot)
Track your financial progress via your ‘net worth’ - so you can stay motivated to keep on track!
While both of these tools have many more features and much more to offer, their main value comes from linking all of those accounts I mentioned at the beginning to keep track of the latest balances for you, so that you can best do #1 and #2.
With both Mint and Personal Capital, your list of accounts is the first thing you see - and you should keep it that way! This list is your personal finance hub for everything related to your financial life. By doing this, you can better understand how each account relates to each other and set up goals that are aligned with those accounts to keep yourself moving forward without having to log in to check each account one by one.
For example, in Mint you can look at ‘Trends’ → ‘Net Worth - Over All Time’ to see the line move from month to month. I know firsthand that seeing this line go up over time can be surprisingly motivating to keep making progress towards your financial goals - it can replace the dopamine rush of a spending splurge you might be trying to avoid. ;) Also note that this number will go up whether you’re paying off debt, saving, or investing - all can be good options!
Tip: Always use the “over all time” time period filter - it shows the most drastic difference and is the most motivating!
*Of course, there’s an asterisk here because you can’t control everything - aka your investments in the stock market and so on.
Also FYI that none of the links in this post are affiliate links. I just really believe in this!
Need help getting your financial life organized? Reach out to Sarah for a free 15-minute chat here!
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