Do you need a life admin day? Why scheduling a day to deal with the ‘intolerables’ and niggly tasks is great for your sanity, your peace of mind and your finances.
“I’m having a life admin day tomorrow I can’t wait!” said a client of ours on a WhatsApp message to me.
“What’s a life admin day?”
“It’s a day I’ve scheduled in my calendar months ago to tackle the ‘intolerables’ and all the low level annoying tasks to do with life and business that need sorting out. I need a new passport, need to shop around for new car insurance, want to cancel a load of app subscriptions I don’t use and am in desperate need of some new slow cooker recipes for the family!” She replied.
“Ooh I could do with a life admin day! That sounds like an amazing idea.” I excitedly messaged back.
My Life Admin Day (Necessarily Morbid!)
It got me thinking throughout that week about the low level tasks that hadn’t been sorted. Having recently moved house and the small matter of having our second son in the summer, it’s been a bit of a busy time. So my husband and I agreed a Sunday to sit down and work through the tasks we’d not got round to finishing.
We both made a list of what we wanted to address and achieve, so with the kids settled for a nap we worked through the tasks. Now our life admin day was a bit on the morbid side! We checked our wills and ensured that they had been drafted correctly. We also went through our life insurance policies and made sure all the information was correct and we each knew what to do. Then we worked on the life insurance trust forms. I always advocate to do this because it means if the unthinkable does happen and you pass away, your life insurance payout can be held in trust instead of falling into your main estate total. It means your life insurance policy won’t be included in probate meaning your loved ones can access it a lot quicker.
I think because the bulk of our tasks revolved around admin to do with our passing we definitely put it off. Nobody likes to think about dying but it is so important to have your affairs in order. Scheduling a life admin day ensured we took care of it.
We also used the time to call Next and get the credit on our account that they’d promised when they delivered our sofa unreasonably late and we went through some bills and subscriptions we no longer needed. All in all it was a very productive day getting a lot of things sorted. It’s cleared a lot of mental space for us both and we feel really pleased we got these tasks completed at last.
Schedule in your own life admin day – the possibilities are endless
Whether you want to use the day to go through your finances, create a budget and cancel those app subscriptions you no longer use a life admin day is always a valuable use of your time.
You might choose to go through credit card bills and look at ways of consolidating your debt to save on interest.
You could sort through your attic and belongings, categorising the things you no longer need to sell on eBay, Facebook buy and sell groups or a local car boot sale. It’s an easy way to get extra cash for the things you no longer use.
You might use your life admin day to create a new savings goal for your family. One of my clients has a goal in 2020 to save for a motor home. They’re using innovative savings apps like the ones we mentioned in this blog to autosave cash to put towards their dream vehicle to travel around the British Isles.
One of my friends used a recent life admin day to clear the ‘drawer of sh**e’ we all have in our homes! She was sick of it vomiting its contents every time she opened it and realised it was causing stress every time she went into it. She also used her life admin day to create a series of habit stacks. This is where you write down all the habits you perform on a daily basis on autopilot. Then you write a list of the positive habits you want to introduce into your life. Then you look at what you do already and bolt it onto your existing habits. For example, doing squats when you brush your teeth, or hanging up or putting your clothes to be washed when getting undressed (instead of adding to the ‘floor-drobe’ pile on the floor!). Another great one that is finance related is every time you check your bank balance, move a little bit of money into your savings account and watch your savings grow.
Whatever you choose to do on a life admin day is going to be worthwhile and help give you back some mental clarity for other more important things in your life. It will leave you feeling accomplished, more organised and if you go down the route of trying to actively save money or sell your old stuff you could be financially better off too.
Helen Crapper is the founder of Insight Finance Solutions. Helen and the team specialise in accountancy advice at every stage of business and help make finances stress free for clients. Helen is also a coach and uses money mindset coaching to help business people remove their personal blocks and limiting beliefs to grow as people while growing their businesses.
To have a chat about your business finances and how Insight Finance Solutions can help you, get in touch.