Here’s today’s topic, ladies: What are your best tips on how to store bills and otherwise organize your paperwork? How do you deal with the mix of paperwork, electronic documents, emailed receipts, and more? I describe my own record keeping system below, but I thought it’d be fun to see what other people do…
I was 15 or so the first time I remember my parents talking about how to store bills, receipts, and other kinds of paperwork. By that point I already had savings accounts, and my mother also opened some early credit cards for me at various stores (thank you, Mom!) to start building my credit report. But it was probably when I got my first job that we actually sat down and started to talk about how to store bills, as well as other record keeping tips. Back then, my parents gave me a big subdivided redweld and suggested that each entity that I got bills and statements from should get its own little pocket. So my bank statements went in one pocket, my lifeguarding check receipts went in another pocket, and then my Gap card statements (or wherever) went in a third pocket. It was all very, very organized. Oh, and every time I made a deposit at my bank (or a withdrawal) I was supposed to enter it in the little checkbook register.
These days, I’ve backslid pretty far from that initial system for record keeping — but it works for me and my family. Here’s how I store my bills (both electronic and paper):
I asked the 
2018 Update: We still think this is a great roundup of the best financial books for beginners, but you may also want to check out our recent discussion on 
‘Tis the season to think bigger than yourself — and so I asked Kate to do a 411 for us on helping charities. Whether you’ve got a little or a lot to give, how can you start donating? What do you need to know? What research should you do ahead of time? (Readers, I’d love to hear from you — where do you donate annually, and then around this time of the year? Do you prefer to give to one organization or spread it out? How have you found organizations in the past?) – Kat
We were talking recently in the Corporette Slack channel about people we knew who were still on the family cell phone plan as an adult — and considering we’ve seen so many news stories about different levels of this kind of co-dependence, from sharing passwords with family members to getting help with your rent, we thought it would be fun to have a bigger discussion about it here at Corporette. Thank you to Rebecca Berfanger for writing this for us — I can’t wait to hear everyone’s thoughts on this topic! – Kat.
What has been your experience buying a car as a woman — and what shared wisdom can you impart to other women just setting out to buy a car? If you went to the dealership with a male significant other or friend, did the salesperson mostly speak with him while ignoring you? Did you feel like the salesperson was being condescending? Did the salesperson assume you didn’t know anything about cars (whether or not that’s true)? And if it is the the case (no judgment from this non–car expert!), did you feel like you were taken advantage of as a customer? Or, did you feel you weren’t treated differently as a woman, and everything went great?
