As we roll into a new year and tax time starts to freak us out, there are some ways to prepare yourself for a more stress free financial year. Starting early and getting organized is the key to starting a new year with a clean slate.

Here are a few simple ways to get ready:

1. Get Organized

Take some time over a weekend and gather together all of your paperwork from last year. This should include finding last year’s tax return information, banking statements, and all of your other monthly bills and statements that have accumulated. If you are not currently using a filing system of any kind, invest in a file cabinet, some hanging folders, and a box of manila folders. Go through all of your paperwork and separate into categories. Shred all other things you no longer need. Make sure you mark your folders clearly and keep important information, such as insurance policies accessible and easy to find. As the year moves along, keep up with your filing system so you can skip this step next year and always be organized. There is nothing more frustrating or un-motivating when you have to go searching all over different parts of your house to find what you need. Storing it all in one place, in an organized manner may keep you focused on paying down your debts and finding more financial freedom.

2. Create a Budget & Track Your Spending

Now that you know where all your paperwork is, you should review all of your balances and start making a budget with the goal of paying down your debt. Along with your budget, start first thing in the new year to track where you are spending every penny of your money so you can create a more reasonable budget and figure out how and where to trim your spending.

3. Start Using Cash

While it might be tempting to spend cash when it is burning a whole in your pocket, start learning to visit the bank or ATM once a week and withdraw your budgeted allowance. You will no longer have to deal with balancing your checkbook, following up on debit transactions, or worried that you have overdrawn your account. This can also help you stop using your credit cards as often, which will help you work toward your goal of paying off your debts, since you are not accumulating new ones.

4. Automate Bill Payments

Since you no longer have to worry about overdrawing your accounts now that you are using cash, sign up for as many automatic bill pays you have available to you. This eliminates the bills you have to worry about paying on time each month to avoid late fees.

5. Automate Savings

Make a trip to your human resource department after the holiday and find out the process for making direct deposits to your savings account each pay week. Since the money is automatically taken from your pay and put into savings, you are likely to be able to successfully maintain and build your emergency fund.< >< ><–>

Make Financials Simple in 2009 was created by and is property of American Consumer News.

Thanksgiving is easily in the top two or three holidays for most Americans. Who doesn’t love spending time with family and gorging themselves all sorts of delicious tryptophan laced foods? Thanksgiving day is usually extremely relaxing and fun, unless you have to cook. It takes a lot of work to make a dinner like that happen, but by following these tips you can cook your thanksgiving in a fraction of what it would take otherwise.The first thing you need to do is get organized ahead of time. Have recipes for everything you want to cook and make a shopping lit for the items that you need. Go into your favorite grocery store several days ahead of time to make sure that you have all the ingredients needed. Also make sure that you have all the dishes that you will need to present the meal, such as glassware, silverware and serving containers.

Most people end up buying a large turkey and having turkey left-overs for the following two weeks. A good rule of thumb is to get a pound of turkey for each person sitting at the table, so if you only have 5 or 6 people, a smaller 8 pound turkey will do you fine. If you have a small family, you might even consider not getting a fully turkey. You could just get a turkey breast instead if your family doesn’t like dark meat.

A lot of people get themselves into trouble when cooking Thanksgiving dinner because they simply have too many sides. Some people put out multiple types of potatoes and multiple dressings. Keep your side-dishes manageable, no more than four. After that things just become to complicated unless you have multiple cooks and are feeding a large group.

Ask for help. If you have guests coming over, ask them if they would be willing to bring the dessert or a side-dish to help cut back on the work that you have to do. If there’s another cook among you feel free to ask for some help in the kitchen. Chances are there’s something someone else could do to make your day a little bit easier.

Another good suggestion is to prepare any food you can the day before. You could easily make a pie on the day before and be just fine. The same could be true for a number of the other sides.

Keep your decorations simple. Remember, people are there for the food, not the fancy center piece. There’s no reason to put a lot of time and effort into a gorgeous centerpiece when a simple flower arrangement will suffice!

Thanksgiving dinner can take a substantial amount of effort to make happen, but by following these tips you can have a much more successful thanksgiving dinner.

How to Make an Amazing Thanksgiving Dinner in Half the Time was created by and is property of American Consumer News.