Amy’s biography is below the interview.
Capt: How, in your opinion, highly effective people set their priorities?
Amy: Start by deciding what is most important in your life. There are so many possible things that can occupy your time that if you don’t actively choose how you want to spend it, it’s easy to get sidetracked from the things that create meaning in your life and the things that allow you to work toward greater financial security. As you set your priorities, keep a positive attitude. Make sure to incorporate things that bring you joy, even though you may feel like you don’t have enough time or enough money for them. For example, maybe you really want to open your own restaurant, but that’s not feasible at the moment. Why not take a cooking class in the meantime? It gets you closer to your goal but involves minimal time and money. You can learn more about my philosophy in Attitude, Luck, and Personal Finance.
Capt: How to manage personal finance in time efficient manner?
Amy: Personally, I keep a monthly spreadsheet of all my income and expenses. Every evening, I enter that day’s income and expenses (if any) into the spreadsheet. That way, I rarely forget to enter something, so my records are very accurate, and it only takes me minute a day to stay on top of my finances. I also know right away if I’m spending too much. Read more about My Budgeting Strategy.
I also check my checking account balance once a day to make sure everything is as it should be-I don’t want to wait until I get my monthly statement to discover any problems.
I also think that every six months or once a year, people should review their biggest spending categories and look for ways to reduce them–for example, considering things like whether it is necessary to maintain a land line phone and whether car insurance premiums could be reduced by switching companies. As technologies change, companies change, and the economy changes, sticking with the same things year in and year out is often not cost effective. For more on this subject, see Why It’s Wise to Review Your Insurance Needs Once a Year.
Capt: What are your tips on successful time management?
Amy:
- Know what time of day you tend to be most productive and do as much of your difficult work as possible during those hours. Save the mundane tasks for your less efficient hours.
- Don’t allow people to contact you whenever, wherever. It creates too many interruptions in your day. Set aside certain times for answering phone calls and emails.
- Do the hardest thing first–don’t spend all day dreading it and procrastinating.
- Group tasks into blocks. For example: Run all your errands on Tuesday afternoon. Pay all your bills on the 15th and the 30th. You’ll get more done in less time this way.
- Don’t force yourself to use someone else’s time management technique if it doesn’t work for you.
I learned some of these tips from The 4-Hour Workweek.
Amy Fontinelle is a freelance writer and editor with clients located across the United States and in Canada. She has written over 300 published articles and blog posts for a variety of national and local publications and websites on topics including travel, restaurants, food and drink, fitness, budgeting, credit management, real estate, investing, and historic preservation. Her articles have been featured on the homepage of Yahoo! and on Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! HotJobs, several local news websites, and Forbes.com.
As a content editor and regular contributing writer to Investopedia, a personal finance and investing website owned by Forbes, Amy has written articles on a wide range of topics including socially responsible investing, the pros and cons of participating in the volunteer corps, and how to handle an unexpected tax bill. Investopedia receives about three million unique visitors per month.
Amy also writes for Two Pennies Earned, her own personal finance website, and is an occasional contributing writer to PF Advice, one of the web’s leading personal finance blogs.
To learn more about Amy, please visit also her personal site at amyfontinelle.com.