Get Your Finances in Order Before New Years
The year is drawing to a close, which means it’s time to make year-end lists and New Year’s resolutions. Maybe you are walking the old school and waiting for January 1st to fulfill your dreams. Or maybe you are following Ema’s advice and working on a new goal in the last few weeks of the year.
Regardless of your New Year’s resolution plan, there are a few things you need to take care of before early 2019.
Use your FSA money
Or carry over $ 500 or more to next year if your employer allows it. Consider the year ahead: do you have to contribute the same amount to your FSA (or HSA), or do you need to increase or decrease contributions based on your family’s medical needs?
Make an additional 401 (k) contribution
You may want to consider increasing your 401 (k) contribution ahead of the new year if you can afford it. You have until April to make your 2018 IRA contributions, but the 401 (k) year contribution usually needs to be paid by December 31st. In 2019, try increasing your contributions by just one percent . Maybe!
Optimize your investment
No, not in response to recent market fluctuations, but because it is helpful to tune your portfolio from time to time. Test your risk tolerance and see if your allocation is in line with it and your long-term goals. Rebalance if necessary .
Check your credit report
If you haven’t looked at your free credit reports for a year, now is a great time to do so. Fraud and identity theft are widespread, as are lending agency errors. Catching things now will only make life easier in the future. And if you don’t plan on applying for a loan (or mortgage, etc.) anytime soon, freeze your credit reports .
Count your landmarks
As I wrote earlier, I don’t believe in hard and fast rules about where a person “should” be in their financial life at a certain age; everything is relative, and everyone’s circumstances are different. However, as a rule, there are several guidelines to follow from a financial point of view:
- What you need to know about money under 20
- What you need to know about money between the ages of 20 and 30
- What you need to know about money between the ages of 30 and 40
- What you need to know about money at the age of 50-60
- What you need to know about retirement money
However, if you’re in your 30s and don’t know what retirement options you have or which plan to pay off, that’s okay. You can start right now.
New Year is a good time to assess where you are on your financial journey and where you would like to be. If you keep making the same mistakes, it’s worth it, just for your stress level, to see how you can change.
Choose something to look forward to
As I wrote earlier, the presence of something , what can be expected – a great way to not only make better use of your money, but also to become happier in general. It could be a long vacation or a good book to pamper yourself with once you’ve achieved certain goals. And speaking of …
Make a goal
… set a financial target for 2019. Over the long weekend, I took the time to reflect on the past year and what I want to do in the next 12 months. I struck a few things off my long-term to-do list in 2018, but there is always more to do. Keeping this in mind is a great way to get motivated for the coming year, but for me it was more practical than that: by writing down my goals, I began to understand how much money I needed to make this happen.
I also set myself several goals related to finance. I am flexible with this; Having written about money and goal setting for several years now, I realize that I cannot control everything, and that even the best intentions can fail. And that’s okay. But I also strongly believe that you have some idea of what you want, and I must take big and small steps to achieve that.
Consider using Personal Inventory Day to get things done, or do a life revision to get a broader picture of what you want. You can start now, January 1st or April – it’s important to think about where you are in your financial life, where you would like to be, and what steps you can take to get there.