Bear in mind there are no guarantees on Internet you won’t meet a louse, pervert, felon, liar, or promiscuous married man. There are no guarantees about this in real life, either. There are some obvious clues to watch for: refusing to share a photo, using foul language, asking for money, being domineering, moving too fast, preoccupation with sex, inappropriate site names such as “SexTrain,” signs of desperation, or being inconsistent or evasive about details.

The best rule of thumb is if it makes you feel uneasy, use “delete” key. You begin with email correspondence, so take your time. You’ll get quicker about catching on to bad signs as you practice.

Always remember to protect yourself. Don’t give your personal email address or home phone number until you’re reasonably sure. Never agree to meet someone in a remote or peculiar location. If in doubt, don’t. If it’s good, it will stand test of time.

The best way to begin is to make a list about your expectations – not just their age and appearance, but their conduct. Then work with a coach to brush up on your skills and provide valuable feedback. When you set up your profile, be honest about your personal habits, lifestyle, and what you’re looking for in a man. When you learn something that works, stick with it. For instance if you read someone’s profile that’s worded better than yours, go back in and tweak yours.

Men’s first attraction is visual (physical), so get a good recent photograph of yourself. Some people are more photogenic than others, but it’s unfair to use a photograph that’s 5 years old, or that represents you before gaining or losing 30 pounds. Be proud of who you are, represent it as best you can, and hope man does same.

For more tips, including how to identify a married man early-on, see my ebook, “Midlife Dating Survival for Women.”

Good luck!

- Before designing your filing system, you should consult your tax advisor or IRS Publication 552 (www.irs.gov). Determine which items you need to keep and for how long. This may sound like a pain, but it will save you hours in long run.

- Analyze your need to access items you have saved for past few years. If you haven’t needed to refer back to those utility bills and you don’t use them for tax deductions, why are you keeping them? In today’s digital age most information can be obtained on internet or requested from original source.

- Justify every piece of paper you keep! A simple filing method that works for many people is "rolling 12-month" method. Instead of filing "short term" records by vendor or topic, file them by month. You keep 12 files, one for each month, and each month dump contests of oldest month and slip in your new items. You will have additional files for items that require longer retention -- place these in alphabetical order behind monthly folders. Remember to keep these categories as general as possible to make filing and retrieval simple.

- Make sure your "keep forever" documents are safely stored in your Safe Deposit Box or at least a fireproof file box.

-Make transition from a current filing system gradual and painless. Pick one or two files a day and get rid of anything outdated or no longer applicable to your life. If records need to be kept for legal purposes, but are not something you need to access regularly, move them to back of filing cabinet in a permanent file section

Catching Up

Finally, you need to address accumulated piles from "before" you got organized. Don’t despair! You’ll probably find that most of it can be tossed using your new filing guidelines.

- Make a quick pass through piles, sorting into "toss", "long-term" and "short-term" piles. Hopefully there aren’t any action items hidden in pile!

- Shred or recycle "toss" pile. File (hopefully) very small "long-term" pile.

- Sort "short-term" pile by month and drop in appropriate folder. - If your filing was too far behind, make this a 15 minute a day task maybe while you do something relaxing like watch TV.

Gaining upper hand on paper requires a minimal but consistent time commitment. At first you will need to consciously make this a part of your daily routine. Before you know it, those mountainous stacks of paper are gone and have been replaced by neat files.

©2004 Bridget Messino