Nate Ritchison, CFP® shares how to get your financial house in order in today’s Question of the Week. Learn the four main steps you should follow, identify your goals and implement strategies to create and monitor a plan to meet your objectives.
Transcription
“Hi I’m Nate Ritchison and this is your Question of the Week.This week’s question is ‘How do I get my financial house
in order?’ There are four main steps to follow when getting your financial house in order. Number one, it’s
assessing where you are currently. This is putting together a net worth statement; understand your assets,
your liabilities and understanding what money you have and where it is. The second step is understanding
what your goals are. What your short-term, medium and long-term goals are. An example of what a short-term
goal might be is saving for a car. An intermediate term goal might be saving for college and a long-term goal might
be like saving for retirement. Making sure that you understand the different accounts and the assets that you have
and dedicating those assets to each one of those objectives. The third step is really making sure that you have a
plan of attack for each one of these. That you manage your debt appropriately, that you manage your assets and
investment appropriately and you use what Albert Einstein called the 8th Wonder of the World which is compound
interest to your advantage. The fourth step is now that you have a plan in place, it to monitor that plan to make sure
you’re on track or what you need to do to get back on track. So it’s really monitoring and adjusting the plan accordingly.
So if you’re not saving enough for retirement and you think you’re not going to accomplish your goals, well you might
need to make some adjustments to your spending or maybe your income in order to accomplish those goals in the
time frame that you want to accomplish them. This has been your Question of the Week, I’m Nate Ritchison thank you
for watching.”
