Cleaning the Garage

Nobody wants to do it, but it has to be done. Items need to be put back where they belong, organized with like-items. Boxes checked for relevance, discarding things when they’re no longer needed. Labeling, reorganizing, inventorying, etc. Keeping your space organized, functional and efficient. And to start this read by quoting a person you likely didn’t expect me to ever quote, Marie Kondo reminds us that, “tidying is the act of confronting yourself.” (She grew in fame some years ago for her approach to cleaning and organizing one’s own home).

Overlay that concept onto your finances, and you’re likely to make huge strides moving forward. Here’s a short list of four areas to reassess and reorganize (as necessary) every year:

1. Check your cash flow. Cash flow simply means your income and expenses - what’s coming in versus what’s going out. Most years, the flow of money will change to some degree. Wages generally increase slightly each year, and inflation generally nudges prices higher each year, so it should be expected that your budget will, by default, need adjusting as well. More significant changes (job change, new home, newborn child, divorce, retirement) can more severely affect your income or expenses. So review your budget each year. The end of the year is a great time to do just that. Once October hits, pick an evening or weekend day in November dedicated to “running the numbers.” This will give you time in December to make adjustments that can start on January 1st - a healthy start to a new year. Start by just listing all sources and amounts of income in one column, and all sources and amounts of expenses in another. You can categorize both columns as monthly or annually, but make sure the frequency matches (all income/expenses listed monthly or all listen annually).

2. Organize your banking and personal finances. This can include things such as making sure your emergency cash fund is satisfactory (in a separate bank account, at the minimum threshold amount), unnecessary debt eliminated or a plan is in place to do so, and bank accounts are established to support healthy habits (separate bank accounts for taxes, (especially for those self-employed), discretionary spending, bills, kids’ school and sports, etc.). I’ve found tremendous value in helping clients reorganize their banking by means of “bucket banking,” where, instead of 1 bank account handling all income and all expenses, a bank account is established for each category into and from which money comes/goes. Use this opportunity to make sure you have enough “buckets” to match your cash flow categories, ensure automated money movements are up-to-date, and rerouting any access to the appropriate place (emergency fund, investment account, retirement account).

3. Reassess your benefits and insurance. Major life events often cause a need for things to change, though even year-to-year, there may be small changes that are reason enough to catalyze changes to your employment benefits and insurance umbrella at large. Reviewing your medical/dental insurance plan (coverage, deductible, limits, etc.), and also reassessing your life insurance needs/coverage (yearly cost, total coverage) are fairly simple to do, and tend to be the things that are really “painful” when they are out of alignment and the time comes to need them. Maybe you need to expand your life insurance coverage, or eliminate it completely. Maybe your family’s health makes it more sensible to go with a higher/lower deductible medical insurance plan. To know that, though, you will have to dig into it. The end of year tends to be when medical/dental plans have their annual Open Enrollment Period, where one can make changes to their insurance coverage w/their employer. Reassess it now so you’re prepared for Open Enrollment!

4. Review your investment and retirement accounts. These might exist in a few places (though I do advise aggregating like-accounts as much as possible), including through your employer’s 401k plan, or perhaps IRAs and brokerage accounts held elsewhere, but at least get the last three quarterly statements to review. This will give you an idea of what your overall investment portfolio looks like, how it’s allocated and performing, and what changes you might need to make. Some changes to consider might be increasing retirement contributions, switching contributions to instead go into a brokerage account to balance your investment portfolio, or updating any beneficiaries to any of your accounts. Maybe this is a good opportunity to have an advisor give you a third-party review of your financial picture - this is something most advisors offer as a service (I do!).

Even this short task list can take up some time in your life, but, like ignoring the garage, it won’t get better with time unless you give it some attention. Doing the small things right on a regular basis is a strong and healthy foundation for building wealth. Schedule a weekend for fall cleanup in the yard. Schedule another weekend for indoor fall cleaning. But give your financial fall cleaning the respect it also deserves from your calendar.

Not sure where to start? Start with emailing me, and I will give you two specific actionable things to do in October that will help you start 2026 with more financial confidence: [email protected]