How to Organize and Manage your Money

Organization is the key to a better life. Organizing things definitely saves a lot of time and money. It avoids unnecessary tension and our life seems a lot in our control but it’s all easier said than done.. Organizing money and finances can be quite overwhelming and of course requires a lot of commitment.

but the truth is tracking every penny you spend can save you some more and can give you peace of mind.. Most of us don’t keep track of our daily spending, many times we forget to pay bills on time and we don’t care where those coins are going that get collected in the form of change.

There are few Steps that can help you organize your finances-

• Effective filing system is very important to remain on top of your paperwork and finances. I personally like presentation folders for most of paperwork but- to each his own.
• Paying all the bills online and setting automatic payment reduces paperwork and late payments to a great extent.
• Another good idea would be buying a coin collector or coin counter kind of
  thing. That way your coins will be in one place and you would know how much they
  are adding upto..It worked for me at least.
• Choosing personal finance software is a great idea too as you can keep track of your money with the help of reports and graphs. They include features like online portfolio management, online bill payments. They can also help you with your taxes, budgeting and
  investing. For example Quicken data can be automatically transferred into turbo
  tax to reduce data entry. Some of the personal financing softwares are -

1. Microsoft money
2. Quicken
3. Money dance
4. TurboTax

Its a good idea to first download and try a trial version and see which one works for you best.

If you like you can read more about personal finance software and their reviews onthe internet.

How to tell if you have a Healthy Weight

After working with WiiFit for quite a while now, yesterday I decided to research a bit about BMI(Body Mass Index) good and bad weight etc and found interesting stuff which I thought of sharing with you all. If you don’t already know it, it’s a good read.

Okay so a good thing to know is that being Overweight and being Obese are two different things.
However both terms mean that the body weight is more than what it should be for a given height.

A body weight may include muscles, bones, water or fat.
Overweight is having more weight than one should according to his/her height regardless of what the weight comprises of.

A person is obese if the all the extra weight is because of fat content. .

It is important to know whether your weight falls within healthy weight range or not because there are certain health risks that maybe associated with extra body weight like heart attack, diabetes, high blood pressure, osteoarthritis etc.

A good way to measure your body fat is to calculate your BMI.
The formula is -
BMI = (Weight in Kilograms / (Height in Meters) x (Height in Meters))
This is to evaluate a BMI of adult but not for children and is based on height and weight.
These BMIs are defined by National Institutes of Health(NIH) as

Underweight-BMI (less than 18.5)
Healthy weight – BMI (18.5-24.9)
Overweight – BMI (25-29.9)
Obese- BMI (30 or higher)

Though BMI is a good estimate of excess weight, it has certain limitations because it does not give you an idea about the difference between muscle and fat, also it does not consider age and gender and therefore it is possible for a fit person to have a BMI in unhealthy range just because s(he) has more muscle mass like athletes.

Waist circumference is believed to be another good estimate of your body fat.

A person having body fat around waist has more chances of developing health related problems like high blood pressure etc than a person having body fat somewhere else.

According to NIH
Women with waist measure of 35 inches or more maybe at increased health risks.

Men with waist measure of 40 inches or more maybe at increased health risks.

So I guess it’s a good idea to keep our waist circumference as well as body weight within the healthy range.