Crash-course last-minute organization: Time and Money

Music festivals are fun. Worrying about time and money is not. Here's a few last-minute things you can do to breathe easy.

1.) Set up a free g-mail account and get comfortable. The potential SMS notifications and the Google calendar application that comes with the address are going to be central to the next few ideas here.

2.) Connect Google calendar to your cell phone number. Whether you have an iPhone, a Smartphone, or a Dumbphone, you can use SMS messaging the same as reminders.

3.) Lots of the shows during Movement have invites directly from Facebook, so if you're on there, learn how the export events function works. You can either organize the events you want to go to collectively and export them as a whole, or individually export single events (ie. send them to your e-mail as a link). Inside the Google calendar, learn how to import calendar files, or if you sent individual event links, just click on "add to calendar" inside the email.

4.) Any events that aren't coming from calendars or Facebook, you have to enter in manually, but all that means is you click when the event is on the main calendar page, and enter the data in a popup window.

5.) If you want to be reminded when events are coming up, inside each event listing are options if you'd like to be texted that the event is happening (you choose how far in advance you are reminded).

Now you have a free automated calendar that sends you a text reminder of every show you are interested in, so you won't miss any by accident. And if you add info into the title of the event like "Claude VonStroke - Beatport Stage, 9:30" and you have your phone set to remind you 15 minutes before it starts, you're golden.

Also, you can share the calendar of your party picks with any person you wish (more convenient if they have a gmail account, also), so they have access to your schedule. And they can share their picks with you. A collective scheduling, if you will.

If you have the iPhone app for Movement, scheduling will be even easier, I imagine.

Now, for the money part. Overdrafting sucks, especially when you're not paying attention. Do a free sign-up at mint.com, spend 15 minutes putting in some basic info, and you can have a text sent if any of your bank accounts go under a certain amount, with a whole lot more options there if you take the time to go through them.

Going over your cell phone minutes also sucks. Do a quick free signup at overmyminutes.com and your phone will text you when you're getting close to your limit.


So, your freedom from stress checklist:

1.) Google calendar will remind you what you want to do, with all of the events you're thinking about going to, properly labeled, set with text alarms, and synced with your phone.

2.) Mint.com will remind you not to blow through money you don't have.

3.) Overmyminutes.com will remind you when to start waiting until 9 to use your phone.


If you know these three services are working for you, you can concern yourself more about the music and less about time and money!