Sunday, December 31, 2006

how do you use your year-end - me I do financial housekeeping

Historically, I would always use my year end to clean-up my financial house. Actually, sometimes it involved actually cleaning up my house.

Here are some of my clean-up activities:

  1. Liquidate my insurance investments - done
  2. Transfer insurance proceeds to investment accounts at Vanguard - 80% done
  3. Make end of year 401k contributions - done
  4. Make end of year custodial roth contributions for children - done
  5. Set-up new custodial roth accounts at Vanguard for children - done
  6. Move 529 investments from Illinois' expensive and cumbersome Bright Start Beginnings program to Vanguard's 529 - in process (waiting for the roll over)
  7. Roll-over / transfer our IRA accounts from Schwab to Vanguard (paper work done, waiting on asset transfers)
  8. Make final flex spending reimbursement requests
  9. Make final dependent care reimbursement requests
  10. Change payroll deductions for wife (moved flex and dependent care to my payroll at Big Company)
  11. Set wife's 401k savings rate to 27% of paycheck
  12. Elect my benefits - select maximum 401k contribution rate per paycheck
  13. Cancel short term disability insurance (no longer needed now that baby delivered)
  14. Order extra birth certificates for new baby (10)
  15. Configure Quicken to download Vanguard information
  16. Use Quicken's account management feature to remove inactive accounts from the navigation bar and re-order accounts for improved visability
  17. Set-up on-line accoutns with Vanguard to facilitae #15 and track transfers
  18. File some of the loos papers on my desk (3 feet worth of papers)

The following are activities I haven't had time to do, but should have been doing:

  • Finish filing (and scanning) loose papers
  • Migrate old files from 2004 into file cabinets used for storing old documents
  • Scan entire living trust / estate plan & share with IL attorney to get estimate for re-domiciling trust
  • Transfer assets and close my remaining accounts at Schwab (except my trading account SNDA is making a turn-around from 12 to 21 per share)
  • Move my individual 401ks to Fidelity (Vanguard doesn't have such)
  • Move college saving money from my money market into my brokerage account into a balanced mutual fund - at year end 2007 I will put it into the 529
  • Move money in new Vanguard accounts into their target retirement 2025 mutual fund
  • Identify and establish asset allocation for my 401k at Big Company
  • Create an end of year summary for 2006's accomplishments
  • Cancel excess insurance policies (not within our irrevocable life insurance trusts (ILITs))
  • Identify lessons learned for 2006

As you can tell, I still have alot to do. Most of which will be addressed in the first two week's of next year.

Am I missing anything?

What are your year end financial housekeeping activities?

Regards,

makingourway

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm just doing some accounting tidying up. Will wait to get all relevant statements/W2 before starting my tax prep (though most of the stuff is already in spreadsheets I maintain year around).

How is your 401k contribution 50% of your paycheck?

makingourway said...

moom, what I meant to say was to max out my 401k contribution is quickly as possible. My employer limits 401k contributions to no more than 50% of any given paycheck. In my situation, I'm uncertain what % they have initially set me with - as an end of year hire I was subject to benefits enrollment for 2006 and 2007 within a few hours of each other.
regards,
m