Spring cleaning usually involves reviving your lawn or garden after the long cold months, packing up your bulky winter wardrobe or de-cluttering your home. What many people forget is that your digital life could use some serious revamping as well. Where to start? Carey Kolaja, Vice President – Head of Global Consumer Products, PayPal has some quick tips on how to tidy up everything from passwords and email to finances and photos.
One Password to Rule Them All
Take a minute to think about where you store your passwords to your favorite online sites. Are they listed in a file on your desktop? Written in a pocket-sized notebook or on various sticky notes in your office? Now, consider the strength of your passwords and whether or not you use the same phrase, pet name or series of numbers for everything. If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are a perfect target for any hacker. The easiest solution is to sign-up for a password manager like LastPass, Dashlane, or 1Password. These services and apps will not only store all of your log-in credentials in one safe place, but also help you generate and strengthen passwords, plus much more. It’s time to shred your precious password notebook.
The Road to Inbox Zen
You have 1,257 unread emails and don’t even know how you got on an Alaskan cruise ship email list. Do you ever wish that your inbox number was zero or that you could cut back on the number of newsletters and shopping emails you receive? A few simple tricks that can get you on the road to inbox zen include: 1) deleting emails that you don’t need to keep, 2) Unsubscribing from daily or weekly newsletters or social network notifications 3) creating a filing system or setting up an auto-sort filter according to a email topic so that you can easily find messages when you need them.
Make Your Money Work Better For You
If you haven’t already, this is the perfect time to sit down and map out your financial goals for the rest of 2015. Start by developing a budget and tracking it manually or with an online tool like Mint.com. Take care of any “IOU’s” to friends or family with PayPal. Make sure your online automatic payments are still up-to-date and activate paperless statements to “go green.” Other areas that need maintenance at least once a year are your savings, investment and retirement accounts.
Get Control of Your Digital Photo Collection
Between your digital camera, mobile phone, laptop and social networks, it can be very difficult to keep track of your personal photos and videos. To get organized, many photo experts recommend utilizing a cloud service like Dropbox or iPhoto or signing up for a photo-hosting site such as Shutterfly. The idea behind using these services is to safely consolidate and back up your precious memories so that you don’t lose them if your phone gets stolen or computer stops working. Some added bonuses of these services include nearly unlimited storage of high-resolution images and videos, and the ability to easily turn your photos into prints and albums that can be delivered to your doorstep.
