Thanksgiving week has turned into the opening whistle on
holiday shopping season, with stores now preparing to open on Thanksgiving Day
itself. It seems like this continues to erode the family aspect of the holiday
as dinner will now be moved (or interrupted) so that families can go stand in
line in the cold weather waiting to save $5 on a gift. Personally, I don’t
think the $5 is worth it, but that’s just my opinion.
In addition to beginning your holiday shopping, this week is
also a good time to look back on the prior 11 months and get your documents
together for the end of the year and the upcoming tax season. I have friends
who keep track of their spending to the penny and keep every receipt in the
most hyper-organized system I have ever seen.
Their approach is not workable for most people, but a good document retention
system can go a long way to having important documents at your fingertips.
Whether it is receipts for major purchases, your health care expenditures for
the year, tax documents and receipts for deductions or whatever other spending
you need to track, this week is a good week to tweak your system and make it
work for you. This will be especially helpful if you find yourself in some kind
of lawsuit down the road – your lawyer will thank you for your organization and
your bill will be much lower.
Years ago, I had a client who had a multitude of bank
accounts with various banks and what would have amounted to boxes of paper for
my review. Luckily for me, when any statement came in, the client scanned the
paper into his system and one day he appeared on my doorstep with a CD-ROM with
nearly 25,000 pages of statements ready to go. If you need a good holiday gift
for someone this season who needs to organize their paper, you can’t go wrong
with the Fujitsu line of ScanSnap scanners (Full Disclosure: I have 3, one at
the office, one at home and a portable one for meeting clients outside of the
office).
For more information or to schedule a consultation,
please call my office (718.568.0221) or visit my website (AndrewMAyers.com)
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