Elizabeth Harris
May 29, 2017
In the contest between pressing, immediate needs that require tending right away and our longer-term wishes, today’s to-do list usually wins. It’s just too easy to put off the things that require less attention now. It’s not simply procrastination, but the very nature of the daily grind insisting on our focus — right now, right now, right now — for family, for work, for health and for household needs that pushes aside long-term thinking.
But if you have a day off from your regular routine as summer begins, consider using that break — or just part of it — to nurture a bit of longer-term thinking.
I was reminded of this over the weekend by The New York Times’s Ron Lieber, who proposed some valuable suggestions for tackling your financial to-do-list, from checking your credit score and reviewing your regular monthly bills to trying to renegotiate better deals, automating payments and revisiting your household budget to attempt to save a bit more.
It’s a good idea, and a smart starting point, but if you decide to take things a step further, it may help to get more organized. For myself, I find it helpful to sort my family’s financial life into three categories: Guard, Give and Grow. And you can get a good start on any of these areas with just a free morning:
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Guard.
Before you do anything else, protecting yourself and your family’s well-being is a top priority. And that, first and foremost, means securing your will and insurance. It doesn’t have to be expensive or overly time consuming. There are numerous online sources to get going with both. But they are absolute musts — especially if you have dependents.
Wills. If you have a simple estate and overall holdings that are less than $500,000 or so, you can probably get by with a trip to a site like LegalZoom, where — surprise — you can generate a legally-binding will in a couple hours or less. My husband and I did this in about two hours, and the sense of relief from knocking this off the to-do list was wildly out of proportion to the amount of time it took. Time very well spent when you consider the alternative. Is it absolutely perfect? Probably not, but if our financial lives get more complicated, we can always revise that initial document with the help of an attorney. In the meantime, we’re covered for now.
Insurance. As for insurance, a single-morning project could include researching and reviewing your existing policies (auto, home, life,) making sure they’re all up-to-date. Or, if you don’t have life insurance — and suspect you need some additional protection — start looking into term-life policies. At the very least, you could have a candid conversation with your immediate family about this decidedly awkward subject.
Housekeeping. This being about the halfway mark of the year, it is also a great time to revisit your tax withholdings and adjust accordingly if need be. Check your emergency and rainy day funds and give them a boost if necessary. Or perhaps just spend two hours rounding up all your account information and writing it down in one place. Anything you can do to declutter your financial life will pay dividends down the road.
Grow.
What can you actually do to expand your net worth in a couple hours? Far more than you might think.
Budgeting and saving while admirable traits, are unlikely to suffice in reaching what you will require to fulfill long-term needs, and that necessitates some strategic thinking — and clear communication with your family. Review your risk tolerance, rebalance investments via your online accounts accordingly, double-check you’re paying reasonable fees for the value you’re receiving. If not, then it’s time to rethink that plan.
If nothing else, take a quiet morning this summer to brew a pot of coffee, check those account statements online or that may be lying around unopened and have a heart-to-heart with your significant other about the family’s financial picture. What are your goals? Do you both agree on them? Are you on track to get there?
Give.
Even as you secure your own financial future there’s usually an opportunity to share. Some regard their giving as its own kind of “investment portfolio” — and you don’t have to be Bill and Melinda Gates to think this way. Take a morning to reflect on what you really care about and start developing a plan to set aside something — any amount — each month that you will dedicate to that cause.
Reviewing your gifts strategically, rather than just reacting to mailings, or campaigns should lead to more thoughtful planning. Involving your family in these discussions can make it even more meaningful. It’s a great place to start a family conversation about values as well as to introduce some financial fluency to your children.
Obviously, this is by no means a complete list for financial well-being, but any one of these projects means looking up from the day-to-day, which is critical. No doubt you’ll lack the time to tackle it all of this at once, so consider setting aside time on your calendar to make a habit of financial planning. Google’s Goals is a tool that could aid in stretching out your thinking past today. Even if you don’t have the time or inclination to begin now, it requires just a moment to book yourself some time to focus on your financial future sometime this summer.
Take a few minutes to do that today and who knows? Maybe it will help carve out a lot more leisure time in the years to come.
This article was written by Elizabeth Harris from Forbes and was legally licensed by AdvisorStream through the NewsCred publisher network.
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This Forbes article was legally licensed through AdvisorStream.