Personal Finance Blog | Money Management Blog | Financial Help

Last week there was a wild fire on the mountainside not very far from my home. Thankfully we did not need to be evacuated, but it got me thinking about whether or not we would have been prepared to leave our home in a hurry if the fire had headed towards us. Is there really any way to prepare for such a thing? With such little notice, how do you decide what to grab? My first instinct would be to grab my grandmother’s, grandfather’s and mother’s paintings off the walls as we all hurried toward the car. Those are, after all, irreplaceable and completely priceless to me.

Then I started thinking about all that paperwork in my home office… legal and financial documents of all types. It would be impossible to find everything that is important in a hurry! I definitely need to do a better job of organizing those documents that really need to come with me if I need to leave in a hurry. Perhaps I should do what the Red Cross recommends and put the originals in a safety deposit box? On her Money and Happiness blog, Laura Rowley also recently included a list of the documents you should keep safely stored. It is also recommended that you keep copies of these valuable documents in one folder or envelope, relatively close to the front door. Then if there is an emergency when you are at home, you can grab the copies on your way out.

I am happy to say, however, that for the most part I rest easy knowing that our finances will be in order even if we have to evacuate our home. I don’t worry about grabbing copies of our bills, bank statements, etc. Since we handle all our finances online with the Finicity Money Manager (formerly Mvelopes), we have access to everything we need whether we are at home or on the go – I just have to remember to grab my mobile phone!

Most of our bills are handled with automatic payments - such a stress reliever! I honestly don’t know how I ever paid all my bills on time before automatic payments – life is just too busy to sit around paying bills! I like knowing that even if I am distracted with other things, such as evacuating my family or, frankly, even if we are just out of town – our bills will be paid on time!

I hope we are never in that situation of needing to evacuate, or losing our home, but if we are, it’s great to know that we won’t have to worry about our finances!

Does anyone else have any good tips for preparing your finances for an emergency?

Jennifer Streiff, Business Development

We’re pleased to announce to all our users that Mvelopes is broadening it’s scope to become Finicity. The new Finicity BETA site is now open for your viewing pleasure! Expect to get an e-mail soon with more information on this exclusive invitation (although if you’re reading this, you’ve already been to the site - nice job!).

We think you’ll like what Finicity has to offer; you’ll notice a ton of new features, all of which are designed to provide support and insights into using the application and managing your money. So join a group, talk with our mentors, read the money tips and enjoy the new site!

Oh, and to access Mvelopes, just use your current username/password and login at www.enjoy.finicity.com. Once you’re logged in you’ll see the “Launch Money Manager” tab in the upper right corner of the site. Click this link to launch the application.

Finicity is still a work in progress (beta), and you can expect to see more site changes in the coming weeks. But we’ll be launching the full site soon, so keep checking to see what’s new!

The Finicity Team

Hello there.

Now that you’ve found us, it’s probably a good time to explain what this blog is all about, so here’s the quick version:

• Enjoy Your Money (EYM) is a new blog from Finicity, a Utah-based money management company
• We’re best known for Mvelopes, the award-winning money management system
• Hopefully you like your blogs spicy (i.e. variety), since EYM is written by numerous Finicity employees

Now if at this point you’re asking yourself “This is madness! Why? Why would they do something like this?” here is the answer you seek: EYM is designed to offer you a wide variety of views and opinions on money, life and anything else that strikes our fancy (which is rare). And even if we don’t always take ourselves seriously, rest assured our #1 goal is to help you manage, save and (you guessed it) enjoy your money. Check out www.enjoy.finicity.com for a trial of our Money Manager and helpful tips, advice and more.

Cheers!

The Finicity Team

*Okay, so maybe the whole world isn’t rejoicing, but we’re still excited!