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how to start personal finances?
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a few practical thoughts: a practical thing that helps me immensely not to loose important paperwork (such as bank statements, bills, payroll statement, all those statements you need for filing tax return, ...) is: in addition to the folder (aktenordner) where the statements ultimately need to go i use a hängeregistratur. there are also standing instead of hanging varieties of the same idea (may be less expensive if you buy them new - i got most of mine used): you have easy-to-add-to folders where you can just throw in e.g. the bank statement when it arrives. this way i give the statement a preliminary scan for anything that is obviously grossly wrong and throw it into the respective folder (hängetasche). every once in a while i take care of all my book-keeping, punch the statements, file them in the aktenordner and enter them into the software. i used to hate and never do the filing when i tried to use aktenordner only. i recently learned that it is well known that aktenordner and schnellhefter are very time consuming if you have paperwork arriving one sheet at a time. i've tried different accounting software (being somewhat on the nerdy side, i use gnucash), including some phone apps.  personally, i didn't like the phone apps i tried - imho it takes too much time to enter things, so i tend to forget it. i'm much better at asking for a sales receipt (kassenzettel) everywhere and sticking them into a calendar at home (i also note cash payments for which i don't have a receipt as far as i recall them - the forgotten ones = difference ends up in category "hobby" as they are mostly the beer or coke after sports). i was also to impatient for the cloud/online solutions i tried (i use one for business, as there the archiving is guaranteed to be according to the legal requirements - but it really takes far more time than entering the records in gnucash).
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