Spring has finally arrived, and it’s the perfect inspiration to clean up your finances. Just like when you clean your home or apartment, now is a great time to examine your financial management and improve it in a few ways. If you’ve ever wondered about how to spring clean your finances, here are some ways to start.
Automate your retirement investments
One excellent way to spring clean your finances is to automate contributions to retirement investments like your 401(k). Having contributions automatically withheld from your paycheck gets money into your 401(k) account in the most efficient way possible, and you don’t have to worry about forgetting to make contributions every month.
If you’ve already automated contributions to your retirement investments, now is a perfect time to increase those contributions, or even max them out. As of 2016, the maximum annual contribution for 401(k)’s is $18,000, with an additional $6,000 available for those aged 50 and older.
Review your goals
When you spring clean your finances, it’s also a great time to sit down with your financial advisor, review your goals, and re-evaluate your plan to make sure that it is still a good fit and that you are on track to meet those goals.
Remember, the right time to consider changing your investment strategy is when the basic factors underlying your strategy change. If an event in your life this year has altered your retirement goals, your time horizon, or your financial needs, make a call to your financial advisor and any other members of your professional team.
Seek an advisor
When you spring clean your finances, do you have a trustworthy advisor to review your goals with?
An independent fiduciary advisor can help you see how your current financial plan fits with your long-term goals. At LexION Capital we walk our clients through wealth forecasting analyses, rigorously testing the way a portfolio is expected to perform over time in various market conditions, with different asset allocations and spending levels. If you want more information on how LexION Capital can help you create a financial plan that works for you, contact us today.
