Let me take you back through one of my own experiences that left me wishing that I had remembered the value of simple systems.

You’d think that if you were travelling the first thing you would check you had with you was your passport.  On this occasion I got all the way to the Gatwick airport check in counter and realised that I had left my passport at home. (A little tip: it’s no use trying to talk your way into travelling, they simply won’t let you.)

Anyway so I spent the weekend in London instead of Spain.

So what’s the lesson here?...

Use simple systems to make sure you don’t end up in a mess.

For me this would have been easy.  I usually have a system for checking that I have the important things when I leave the house.  You probably do too - keys, wallet, 2 x phones and if you are travelling – passport.  The idea is that a simple system, once in place will allow you to relax and set and forget your property portfolio.

So how should you apply this to your property portfolio?

Keep track of when you receive payments

Its a good practice (one which I follow) to choose a date (try to arrange the appropriate payment date with your letting agent) and each month check your bank account to make sure you’ve received the rent that you are owed.  At the same time you can check that the mortgage payments have been debited from your account.  This allows you to manage your portfolio finances once a month and so rather than constantly checking or even potentially forgetting you can sit back and not think about it for the rest of the month.

Set reminders to save money on your mortgage

Whether you use a conventional diary or rely on your blackberry, phone or outlook calendar you can save yourself money simply by setting 1 reminder.  As soon as your new property completes set a reminder three months ahead of your mortgage discount period expiry.  That way you give yourself ample time to remortgage and save yourself money.  Using this system you can ensure that you will NEVER pay the standard variable rate.

Stop procrastinating with payments

This is perhaps the quintessential system to ensure that payments are managed smoothly. Providing that you have budgeted correctly (your mortgage cost averaging and provision account have been created correctly) you will have money waiting to pay your bills as you receive them.  Don’t procrastinate, arrange payment straight away and then you can forget about it and do better things than paying bills.  If the problem is that you are worried about paying the bill then you need to address your cashflow. Delaying payments isn’t going to help the situation.

Filing, phew! It’s ok to leave it as a monthly task

If you’re like me, filing is not your strength. I am a sort of planned neglect filer. If that’s you, you plan to not do something rather than just not do it.  Then you manage the guilt and lurking feeling of having to complete a certain task.  Rather than just collecting all your property related correspondence in a box (which is what I did for my first year as an investor) a better system is to set aside 1 day a month and you can get it all out of the way in half an hour.

Keep your money in your own pocket through self insurance

Some of you will be screaming out in protest to this point, and in saying this I am not suggesting in any way that you should do what I do with regards insurance. I don’t have insurance for any of my buy-to-let properties.  The freeholder covers the house insurance and for the contents I put aside £20 a month for each property and have a rainy day fund of £5000 in the event that I would ordinarily need to use insurance.

What will surprise you is that I have never had to dip into this fund... Ever! In the event something has happened the deposit covers it. This is the benefit of investing in what I call a . You avoid the painful situations that can arise at the lower end of the market.

These are just a few of the simple systems that I have in place that let me set and forget my portfolio.

Live with passion,