I know Christmas isn’t even here yet, and I’m already giving you a to-do list before January 1st…Don’t worry, you don’t have to do all of this right now! Just make a note to do this sometime in the next few weeks. I promise if you do these financial must dos before the end of the year, you’ll start the New Year off (financially) right!
1. Prepare for Taxes.
Yep. That’s right. You need to get prepared for tax season now. Did you withhold enough (or too much)? Check the IRS Calculator to see what your withholdings should be. Will you owe or get a refund this year? (You can use this free estimator tool to see what your refund might be.) Do you need to sell losing investments to offset gains? Some actions MUST be taken by 12/31 in order to count for this tax year, so make sure you jump on the ones that do.
If you find yourself scrambling every year to figure out our taxes, head here to this blog post, where I detail how I organize our taxes every year and grab my tax spreadsheet template (it’s free!).
2. Make a plan to max out retirement contributions.
You have until April 15th to max out, but you need to make a plan and put it in your budget now to make sure you can max out by April 15th if you haven’t already!
3. Do you have life insurance (or burial insurance if you’re single)?
If not, you need to get it before Christmas. I know this is morbid to think about but let’s not leave our families hanging trying to figure out how to pay for our funeral, cremation/burial. Let’s give them this gift of term life insurance. If you’re single (as in you have no dependents, then just get burial insurance. Don’t leave your mom or dad or siblings scrambling to figure out how to pay to bury you.)
4. Review/update your beneficiaries.
Did you have a baby or a new grandchild in 2022? Did you get married or divorced? If you’ve had any major life changes in the last year, you need to make sure you update the beneficiaries to your investment accounts and insurances.
5. Make your 2023 goals.
Don’t worry; we didn’t achieve our 2022 financial goals, so it’s really not the end of the world if you didn’t achieve yours but I do want to encourage you to still review the goals from this year and then make a plan for 2023. Trust me, even not meeting your goals in your timeframe still brings you every little bit closer to crossing the finish line so long as you don’t give up.
6. Assess your benefits at work.
For many companies, the only time to enroll in health insurance and their retirement programs is now – the end of the year. So make sure you review your benefits options and take action on them now before year-end.
7. Check your credit.
If you haven’t already, make sure you pay attention to your credit. I know we’re a 100% debt-free family, so why am I talking about credit? Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be on the hook for other people’s spending! You don’t need to pay for credit monitoring. You can do it for free from sites like Credit Karma (which we personally use) to keep tabs on your credit this holiday season (which happens to be the highest time of the entire year for identity theft!)
Alright! I know that may seem like a lot, but it’s not. None of these things should take that long – even getting life insurance. You can just get a policy that doesn’t require the medical exam right now and always update it to a larger policy that requires the exam later.
OTHER POSTS YOU MAY ENJOY
Leave a Reply