Never miss a bill again with our daily money management services

Keeping up with daily finances overwhelms and frustrates so many people, especially those who are accustomed to having someone else take care of that. All too often, we find that older women who’ve been widowed or divorced don’t know how much money they have or how their bills are paid.  Newly divorced men whose wives have been taking care of this part of their lives for their marriage can be overwhelmed as well.
I strongly believe that everyone needs to be empowered to take control of their financial situation. And during my years focusing on paper-less and digital organizing, I’ve found that helping people get their finances in order is one of the most rewarding things I do.
With that in mind, we recently became a member of the American Association of Daily Money Managers. During our eight years of providing professional organizing advice, Order Your Life has always offered daily money management services to our clients. Joining AADMM – and adding its rigorous standards (including its strict code of ethics) to our existing guidelines – assures you that you can place your full trust and confidence in the value and reliability of those services.

What is daily money management?

Daily money management is all about financial organizing, not investing. We don’t give investment advice; instead we pull all your personal or business finances together and present them in a way that maximizes your ability to understand and manage your financial situation. Both I and team member Shelly Trimble, who has 15 years of banking experience, as well as my husband Grady Catterall, who has 30 years of actuarial experience, work with daily money management clients.
To start out, we like to develop a rapport with our clients so that they can thoroughly get to know the person handling their finances, instead of having someone they don’t know doing everything off-site. It’s important for a new client to get comfortable with who we are and how we operate.

What financial services do we offer?

What tasks we perform depends on the client’s needs. We help some clients file their taxes and others to reconcile their monthly expenses. For those clients who are struggling with health conditions, including dementia, we make sure all their bills get paid on time. Sometimes people just need an objective person to come in and say, “This is your financial situation.” We can set up systems that allow people to know their money situation at a glance – with our experience, it’s easy for us to set up online banking and tracking systems that might be a bother for them to set up by themselves.
Some other tasks we perform include:

• Receiving, processing and paying bills, including calls to payees regarding incorrect bills and preparation of checks for client signature
• Reconciling banking accounts and investment statements
• Setting up and maintaining personal finance and money management tools (such as Quicken, Mint, etc.)
• Organizing and submitting medical insurance paperwork; including assistance with changing plans
• Training clients on how to use technology to access their accounts (this service is especially appreciated by some of our senior clients)
• And many more..

As professional organizers, we already understand and appreciate the sanctity of the trust we’re given by our clients. People can say what they’d like to a therapist, but that therapist never sees beyond the client’s front door – whereas we’re actually in our client’s homes. We bring the same level of trustworthiness that comes from that experience into our duties as daily money managers.

Helping seniors with daily money management

An aspect of our services that I’m particularly proud of is the work we do with seniors. Order Your Life has been helping seniors move and downsize for some time, and assisting them with their finances has been a natural extension of that service. My mother is 83 years old and still lives independently, and I enjoy helping her learn how to navigate and learn financial technology so that she can do it herself whenever she wants to. We receive referrals from Iona Senior Services, Aging Network Services, and geriatric care managers to provide daily money management services to their clients.
I decided to join AADMM because I get great pleasure out of this kind of work – and we make it fun! We really do try to make our financial organizing sessions enjoyable for our clients who want to be involved. And if they don’t, they can just leave the pile of bills for me or Shelly or Grady, and we’ll get them done!