Habits determine our actions and our actions determine our outcomes. It’s as simple as that. Right from the time we wake up to the activities that we perform to the time we sleep, everything is carried out in a more or less pattered format. This pattern ultimately results in the formation of habits.

“Our habits are majorly driven by our subconscious mind and it is believed that around 45%-90% of our behaviour is influenced by our habits”.

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It therefore becomes essential to adopt the right habits as habits reflect the manner in which we have conditioned our minds. A person can attain financial success only upon having the right foundation, i: e; the right financial habits. If we aren’t surrounded with the right financial habits, then it becomes all the more difficult to create, manage and sustain wealth. Moreover a person’s probability of being in deep debt is far lesser they follow the right financial habits.

“Collecting and documenting or filing invoices and bills” in physical or digital format is one such golden financial habit.

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Successful people have a structure in place for their expenditures, for their savings and for their investments too. They have this habit imprinted in their minds and implement it in a disciplined and structured manner. This habit may seem insignificant but it plays a very significant role.

Benefits of such filing or documenting:

• You’ll be better positioned when you go to the store in case of any default in the product. Maintaining a “Guarantee & Warranty File”, will be extremely helpful to you in case of any emergencies whereby you want to claim, get refund, exchange or guarantee and so on and so forth against the said product or service.
• It’s going to give you comfort while filing your returns and makes the job of your auditor smooth.
• It’s going to facilitate and help you analyse, For eg: Let’s say that you’ve made a donation to an organisation fighting for a social cause. If you wouldn’t take the receipt of that, your auditor is going to ask you to furnish it and you may not have it. There’s also a possibility that the money could be wrongly utilised by the person to whom the charity is given to.
• It’s going to help you to discriminate between various types of expenditures you’ve made.
• It’ll help in reducing wastage of money.
• Your children are going to learn these habits from you as you’ve placed systems and hence will have a better hand at managing their finances.

It is believed that the way we do anything is the way we do everything. Its validation can be experimented in each of our lives.

For example:

Do you have a file that is solely dedicated to documenting the expenditures of the household?

This may sound too much work but honestly it isn’t. By having such a structured manner of documenting your expenses in a physical or digital folder, you are making your life much simpler. You know where to find what if something was to happen. Even in your absence, your family members can access it easily as you are putting few systems in place and SYSTEMS ALWAYS WORK! The same could be replicated in your office too, may it be in income and expenditure file or in record and data keeping etc.

Being successful is easy. You just need to build the right habits surrounding it.

As John Dryden says, “You first build your habits, then your habits build you”.

This habit focuses on transforming your existing financial mind set. What to file and what not to file is at your discretion but first make it a habit to start recording if you haven’t done it yet and figure out ways to structure it properly if you’re already practise filing.

(P.C: Google Images)