Personal Finance 101 Made Simple for 2016

1. Know your credit score. Having a great credit rating helps you save on auto loans, mortgages and even car insurance! Yet, it is surprising how many people have no idea what their rating is. Credit cards have fortunately made it easier than ever to track your rating by including your score every month for free on your monthly bill! If you don’t have that perk, check out creditkarma.com. It is fast, easy and free and there are no limits to how many times you can check your score. If you find that your score is not where you want it (780-830 is "Excellent"), go to myficoscore.com to download one of your annual credit reports – you get one free from each of the three credit bureaus every year. Look over it for any errors, and the site will offer some great resources for what to do if you see incorrect information, as well as more general information on how to increase your score. 

2. Create a budget! I know, I know: budgeting is about as much fun as dieting and since you just started one of those, the last thing you want is to restrict your spending too! But stay with me – budgeting isn’t all about restricting, it is about helping you reach your goals. After all, you don’t diet because it is fun to eat celery. You diet so you can look good on the beach. You don’t cut coupons because you have nothing better to do, you cut coupons so you can watch your new car fund grow into a reality.

Mint.com and Learnvest.com are great platforms to make budgeting way easier these days too – and more fun! These are completely secure and completely reputable sites that link up to every account you have: checking, savings, credit cards, retirement and brokerage accounts, loans ... Once you are set up, every time you log in your dashboard gives you a completely comprehensive overview of your finances, including your net worth! Slightly terrifying at first but also completely satisfying when you see the number move in your favor month after month. Your monthly budget will live in there, as well and all the fun charts and analytics make it slightly addictive – I log into Learnvest practically daily. 

It’s all about having goals. Getting out of debt, saving for a down payment, feeling okay about your retirement savings... whatever the goal, a budget will help you get there.

3. Assess your retirement savings. This one is a bit more complex, and I did promise simple. So I will start with – do you have any idea what your retirement accounts did this year? Can you name any of the stocks you are invested in? Do you know how to access all your different accounts (reading your quarterly statement does NOT count as accessing your account!)? If you answered "NO" to any of those questions, I want you to start there. There are so many money/stock/investment  resources online to help but starting with the firm(s) you are investing with should be your first stop to best understand what options you have at your immediate disposal.

And here is some motivation (read: scare tactics) to get you moving: Did you know that at 35, you should have your current salary saved in a retirement fund? At 45, that amount should equal three times your salary, and by the time you retire, your goal should be about eight times!? Obviously these are some very broad benchmarks, but they serve a purpose in waking us up if we are lagging. Some super simple things to do to catch up?

• ALWAYS contribute to your company’s 401K at least to the point of a match. That is free money!

• Make a habit of applying your cost-of-living raises to your 401K contribution. If you get 2 percent, increase your contribution by 2 percent. You won’t even miss it! (I know – I hate that sentiment too.)

• Roll over old accounts into one IRA. Consolidating helps you keep track of your money and grow it as one lump sum. IRAs tend to have better investment options than a 401K.

• Max out a Roth IRA every year! If you qualify for a Roth, it is one of the best vehicles out there for post-tax savings. A Roth grows tax-free because you have already paid tax on the money you contribute. Additionally, there is no fee or penalty for withdrawing your contribution at any time! That is why so many people use it as an emergency savings account as well. There is an annual maximum contribution of $5,500 for people under 50, $6,500 if over, but you can continue to apply any IRA contributions to the previous year through the tax deadline of April 15! So if you haven’t started an IRA, Roth or not, now is a great time to open an account and contribute the max through April 15, 2016 for 2015 and then keep going to max 2016 by December 31. I recommend opening any IRA (Roth or traditional) in a low-cost brokerage firm such as Charles Schwab or TDAmeritrade.

There are three (kinda) simple things to get you on your way to a great 2016! If anyone has any questions or would like to keep up the conversation, I would love to hear from you! I can be reached at katem@mmsmeetings.com.