Blunt Money

A new article is posted each day on Blunt Money, where you get plain talk about money and personal finance. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Our house is relatively clutter-free, and I consider myself fairly organized, but there is a limit to my organization. I have files and a couple of filing cabinets, for example, but I tend to put things away in them and then never look at them again, so the files get thicker and thicker. Then when I do need something from them, I have quite a few papers to look through. Flipping through paperwork can take a lot of time.

I got a letter this weekend from my flexible spending account that prompted a flurry of paperwork hunting. I’d expected the envelope to contain a check for the several month’s worth of expenses that I’d submitted last month, but instead it was a reminder notice saying essentially that I had until the end of the year to spend the money, and until March to submit claims. There was no mention of my most recent claim, and no check.

“No problem,” I thought, “I’ll just resubmit it.” I pulled out the file that my expenses should be in and flipped through it. Nothing. I flipped through it again. Still nothing. Now I KNEW that I had carefully copied everything and put it away before sending off my claim. Apparently finding the copies was going to be another matter.

I checked the next most likely spot: our computer room closet, which I sometimes use as a staging area for things that I think I might need before filing. Nothing. But I did notice that the closet was a mess, so I figured I might as well accomplish something while I tried to think of where else the paperwork might be. So I put an old fax machine into the Goodwill pile. I started shredding some photos that I no longer needed. About 5 minutes into the shredding, our shredder began making an awful noise. I unplugged it and tried to fix it, but that didn’t work.

So far the hunt for paperwork had cost me an hour and a shredder. (Which I’ll wait to replace until I can find a deal.)

Frustrated, I decided to flip through the original file folder one more time. Third time’s a charm, right? It was. My paperwork was stuck in among the airline claim information. But it got me wondering, how much does disorganization really cost us? How much is our time worth? How much do we miss out on in the form of missed deadlines (for rebates, bills, etc?) and missed opportunities (expired coupons, freebies, time we could have spent doing something more interesting?) I’m betting it’s a lot.