Include your finances!

Blue skies and warmer weather mean spring is on the way! As you tackle spring-cleaning in your home, don't forget to clean up your finances. Gather all of your financial documents, receipts, and folders together in one place and get to work tidying up your financial life.

Check Your Credit Rating: check your credit ratings at the major credit bureaus and take action to correct any errors or omissions. Consider purchasing your FICO credit score. The FICO score is often used by banks as an indicator of your creditworthiness. If you have a good score, you may be able to negotiate better interest rates on your credit cards. If you have a poor credit rating or poor FICO score, develop a plan to improve your credit rating.

Document Retention: keep a minimum of three years of supporting documents for federal tax purposes and six years of supporting documents if you are self-employed or have multiple sources of income. Adjust this holding time period if you have state requirements that are different from the federal requirements. Keep all your tax documents together in one file, with separate sub-files for each tax year.

Organize Your Banking: consolidate your accounts, consider signing up for automatic bill pay, and shred old documents that go beyond the need to substantiate your tax returns or capital purchases/sales. Consider signing up for electronic statements to reduce your financial paperwork.

Critical Life Documents: gather your critical life documents (birth certificates, marriage certificates, social security cards, passports, and wills) and put them in a portable water and fire resistant home safe or a lock box at your bank.

Buy a Shredder: put any old financial paperwork that you want to throw out through a cross-cut paper shredder to avoid identity theft.

Estate Planning and Insurance: create or update your will, trust, and life insurance policies, particularly if you have experienced a major life event like the birth of a child, marriage, or divorce.

Review your investments: Are your portfolios properly balanced for your age, time until retirement, and your willingness to take risk? With tax law changes, you may wish to consider account rollovers or capital gain and loss strategies as well.

What are Your Rights?

Many Americans are behind on their bills due to high unforeseen medical bills extended unemployment, or mounting credit card debt. Being contacted by a debt collector can be an upsetting and stressful experience. It is important to know your rights to protect yourself from abusive, deceptive, and unfair debt collection practices.