A good decluttering of your finances doesn’t just help your long-term financial health, but your mental wellbeing too. Stop waking up in the middle of the night with anxiety over a missed payment or a subscription you forgot to cancel after the 30-day free trial. Get an overview of your debts, savings and spending to understand your day-to-day cash needs and to give you peace of mind over your finances.

Feeling overwhelmed and not sure where to start? Have a look at these four steps to organise and declutter your finances:

Clean up your accounts

If you’re living from month to month, you may think you can ease your stress levels by avoiding calls from creditors or leaving those bank statements unopened. But denial will only make things worse in the long term.

Many of us have accounts at multiple banks or loans from multiple institutions and keeping track of all this can be a major headache. You can move all your accounts to one institution to get an overview of your finances. Alternatively, you can make use of personal finance apps to help you manage your money more efficiently. Seeing the full picture brings a fresh perspective on what you need to prioritise as you manage your daily cash needs and improve your financial wellbeing.

Tidy up your taxes

We know you feel that stab in your chest when you see PAYE deducted from your salary each month, and taxes are the last thing you want to think about. But sometimes SARS gives you something back! When you submit a tax return it often results in a ‘refund’. Now that is some real motivation to tidy up your taxes.

This year the period to submit individual tax returns is shorter than ever. You only have until 24 October 2022 – so it’s time to get all those documents together and check your tax status. Make sure that you have received your IRP5 and other tax certificates, like your medical aid certificate and retirement annuity fund certificate. Update your personal information, such as banking details, address and contact details online on SARS eFiling.

Declutter your debt

So you’re paying off your student loan, small loans and credit cards, each with different amounts and deducted on different days. The first priority is to pay off your largest debt – which has the highest interest rate – but if it were that simple you would have done it already!

Debt consolidation could be the best option for you if you have a large amount of debt, if your credit score has improved (and you now qualify for a lower interest rate) and you have enough cash flow to cover the monthly debt. But debt consolidation is not the solution for everyone and it’s important to first do your research and to address the underlying problems that led to this debt, like overspending.

Purge unnecessary spending

So you’ve organised your accounts, downloaded the best personal finance apps and now you have an overview of your income and spending habits. Do you notice any patterns? Are there areas you didn’t realise expenses had added up to so much? Or maybe your wallet could handle the stress of some expenses last year, but suddenly they’re bleeding you dry (we’re looking at you, petrol!).

It’s time to adjust your habits and get rid of any unnecessary spending. Cancel any subscriptions you’ve barely used in the last three months (or forgot you even signed up for) and finally return that package you said you would send back weeks ago. These might seem like small expenses, but they add up.

Now that your finances are neatly organised and you have a better grasp of your financial health, the final step is possibly the most important: maintaining that organisation!

Find more tips to declutter your finances in these blog articles:

• Decluttering the Budget-friendly Way
• The Pros and Cons of Debt Consolidation

The information in this article is for information purposes only and does not constitute professional advice.