Get Sorted: Easy as

Small successes lead to more success, and snowballing up can make it easier for us to build momentum and get going. Photo / Thinkstock

Do what’s easy first, and the rest is easy.

"Do what's easy first, and the rest is easy." That's a valuable attitude I picked up from a builder I used to work for - he would start each day with a long legal pad list of things to accomplish.

It taught me a lot about work. And people.

Small successes lead to more success, and snowballing up can make it easier for us to build momentum and get going. Trying to do too much at once, on the other hand, can be demotivating and even paralysing.

When it comes to your personal finances, where are the quick wins? I've discovered that "getting sorted" is not so much something you do just once and that's it; there's always something more you can be sorting out.

If you're carrying a few different kinds of debt - credit cards, personal loans, car loans, student loans or a mortgage - you may find that paying off the smallest balances first builds a repayment snowball that eventually knocks them all down.

But the other thing to take into account are the interest rates that you're paying on each of your debts. Which is the most expensive?

If you list yours in order of interest rates, you can see where it's easiest to save the most money: by paying off the highest rate first, then the next highest, and so on.

Sorted's debt calculator can help you figure out the quickest way out of debt.

Another thing to consider is how much time you have to get things done. Last weekend I was shifting house with a close friend's help, and we started with the lighter stuff first. But moving always takes longer than planned, and we were running out of time before we could get to load what seemed like the heaviest washing machine ever...

I guess we can't let doing what's easy first become an excuse for putting off the most important stuff.

Get Sorted is written by Sorted's resident blogger, Tom Hartmann. Check out the guides and calculators at Sorted - brought to you by the Commission for Financial Literacy and Retirement Income - at sorted.org.nz.