Take Action Today With Your Money

Is there something you’ve been neglecting or putting off when it comes to your money? Here are some oft-neglected areas of personal finance:

• Creating a will
• Making a spending plan/budget
• Funding retirement
• Saving for college

Notice anything interesting about that list?

The first two items deal with things we’d rather not think about. If we make a will, we admit in black and white that we’re going to die someday. Who wants to admit that?

If we make a budget or a spending plan, we might have to change, or at the very least shine a spotlight on our current habits. We resist being “told what to do”, even when we’re the ones doing the telling.

The next two items deal with things that feel very far away, so they are easy to put off. Other things feel more urgent, right up until the very last minute. That’s when we realize — too late — that we’d have been a lot better off if we had only started sooner.

Or we may assume we don’t need to plan for those things at all. We intend to work forever and our children will get scholarships. But what if we can’t and they don’t? At that point our choices are limited.

It’s not too late to handle any of the things we’ve been putting off. In fact, it’s time to take action today.

Choose one thing you’ve been avoiding and write it down. (I like to use Google docs for stuff like this, but anything will do.) Now make a list of the things you need to find out about the subject before you can take action. Those are your first steps.

Do one of them today.