Spring Clean…Your Finances

• Review your 2011 Financial Goals. Did you make some financial goals for 2011 back in January? When was the last time you reviewed them. Take some time this month to review your goals. Are you taking the steps to where you want to be? If you didn’t make any goals in January, take some time to plan for the balance of the year.
• Create or update your balance sheet. The Family Balance Sheet is a form that I created to help me communicate the state of our finances with my husband. It is a one page, visual reminder of our assets (checking, savings and retirement accounts), our liabilities (our debts) and our financial goals.
• Check your credit report for errors or unauthorized activity.. You are entitled to a FREE copy of your credit report. There are three separate credit reporting companies: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. You can get a credit report from each of them one time a year. The easiest way to obtain one is to go to www.annualcreditreport.com, a site that joined the three companies together. My husband and I each obtained one report this week and it took about 5 minutes each. In 4 months, we will obtain a another report from a second company and 4 months after that we will obtain a third report. It is recommended to obtain reports from all three because they each might have different information about you. I decided to stagger my requests so that I can monitor through out the year. My husband’s report was clean, but I noticed one thing on my report that I am going to investigate. It might not be anything to worry about, but I’m going to look into it anyway.
• Clean your home office or work space. File, purge, shred and wipe down surfaces to start the second quarter fresh.
• Organize your financial paperwork. One of my most popular posts is, How Long Should I Keep My Financial Records?. The post reviews what is recommended for bank statements, bills, credit card statements, household records, legal documents, pay stubs, receipts and taxes. If you are having a hard time closing your filing cabinet, then it is time to clean it out.

Have you done any spring cleaning to your finances lately? Are you planning on doing any of the above steps? Let us know in the comments.

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This post is linked to Frugal Friday at Life as MOM.