It’s the end of 2024. Can you believe that? Nope. Can’t. Unsubscribe? Unsubscribe. But it is a great time to reflect, right? To go back, reflect, and go, what happened? What did I want happen? Did it happen? What should have happened? Yeah. What didn’t happen? Yes. Yes. There’s lots of things.

And before we get excited, Before we move on to 2025, we need to just wrap up 2024 right quick and that’s what we’re going to help you with today. Yeah. So today we’re doing a year end financial checklist. We’re going to help you go through last year this past year, 2024, and wrap it up in a little bow, a little box with a bow.

It’s just going to allow you to better set up 2025 for success. So our next podcast is about setting goals. So what you need to do is you’re going to do this checklist first wrap up the year, and then you can use that information, that data to propel you into 2025 with the Goal Setting Podcast

Now, if you have our budget, this is really, the first thing that we want you to do is really easy. If you don’t, it might, it’s going to take a little more investigation possibly. But, or if you’re using our system, that would help too. What we want you to think about is just look at your budgets.

, we want you to look at the last 12 months of budgets. Let’s see what happened. If you look at some of our very fabulous clients budgets.

Yeah, there’s this line I call extra spending. And I just keep, sometimes I just have to keep adding. Okay, it’s interesting. And then sometimes it’s in the bills account. And that’s lovely. Anyway. But so the goal is to obviously not have any of that, but you might be able to look back at your budgets and see some trends, some things, some habits that maybe you want to reflect on, yep. So with our our workbook that we have, it is so easy to go tab by tab and go month by month. And then also we have a financial snapshot page, another tab wraps up your whole year for you. So you can see it all together. It’s got your assets, it’s got your debts, it has your liabilities.

It also has, your net worth, but it also has like your budget. It’s what did you spend the most on this year? What did you spend the least on? So you can really see, okay, maybe I don’t need this much money in this area that I thought I did because I’m backing off on spending in that category.

Yeah. And even if you don’t have our budget, if you at least follow our system, you would be able to look in your accounts and clearly, be able to see what my spending habits are, what may be some of the things I need to fix. Or, if you’re, if you have savings buckets, but you notice that you transferred out of them a lot, like these are the kinds of things that we want to look at.

And yeah, just see, just a little checky check. Yeah. Maybe you don’t have, maybe you didn’t have enough in your home account because. You spent it all. And maybe you, if you go back and look at the notes, like every time you transferred money out to your spending, you’re so good. Yeah. What did I actually spend my money on?

It wasn’t on home stuff that I robbed Peter to pay Paul. What is going on in there? Or you can be my, like my other client, she her and her husband actually, they thought quote unquote, they would, they spend about 30, 000 a month. Come to find out once we got everything organized, we’ve got our system set up.

She does not need that much money. Like she was, she’s probably saving, I think. Around nine, I can’t think maybe like 16, 000 a month right now in her savings buckets. But she’s I have so much money in my savings buckets that I have not spent this year. She’s so I’m really going to cut back in 2025 of what I’m going to put in there.

So it really allows you to ask yourself, what do I want to continue doing based on what I have been doing? Yes. So the next step, the next item on the checklist to do would be to assess your debt. Maybe you don’t have any debt and you Blur on, blaze, blaze on past this step. But if you do, then let’s look at it.

And this is something that we do with our clients. It’s very eyeopening. A lot of times we it’s hard for us to give ourselves credit for all the progress that we made. So this is a great opportunity to say look at all the debt we paid off, look at how far we’ve come. It’s been a whole year.

We’ve been at it. Look at what we’ve done. And that could be one. One outcome. Yeah. And if you did not pay off as much debt as you wanted, that is okay. Make a plan this year. Use our goal setting podcast. Next, the next one to sit down and go, okay, how do I tackle that? How do I break down the 10, 000 of debt that I want to pay off?

Break it down by quarter and by month to make sure that happens. And another thing that you might want to look at with this debt is when, maybe like when the bleeding stopped, that’s what, what I call it, like triage when the bleeding stopped. Did you did you start, did you add, and then you finally decided to start using cash, paying for stuff as you go stuff like that.

I think that’s all good to assess your habits and the progress that you made. Because again, like Vanessa said, it’s okay if maybe you didn’t make as much progress, but also I recognize that you didn’t put more on debt. That’s a big deal. That’s huge. Yeah, that’s still a win. Okay, so after you’ve looked at your debt, let’s look at your savings goals.

Okay? What did you want to accomplish in 2024 as far as your savings goals? Maybe you, your goal this year was to set up three savings buckets and you only got to two, or maybe you wanted to set up three and you got to five, right? So let’s look at everything that you wanted to set up in 2024 and how it turned out by the end of the year.

Yeah or maybe you wanted to do your emergency fund. Maybe there was a vacation you wanted to save and pay for in cash. So look at what your goal was. And then how you did how you did with that goal. And we’re going to use that information to be able to springboard off of for next year, right?

So in the podcast about goals, we’ll talk about it, but you’re going to see what you were capable of this year. You’re going to see what you did. You’re going to know. Maybe you messed up here or there, but for the most part, maybe you were, you did, you were disciplined. And now you can take that to the next level next year.

But the first step obviously is to look at what you actually accomplished this year. This is like the bigger version of our 90 day audit, right? So it’s like, what are you doing and what do you want to be doing? And so this kind of allows you, especially if. Maybe this year you weren’t looking at, maybe this, you just started listening to our podcast, and you’re like, okay, I actually haven’t done anything.

I haven’t even done a budget, but I do want to look at what I have been doing. And so maybe you want to print some big statements, look at that, and you can wrap it up and go, okay, so I’m actually going to start. Start setting goals, doing a budget in 2025. So another thing that you want to do that you’re all going to be really excited about, including Vanessa mostly, is get all your documents, financial documents in order, right?

But it’s the end of the year. You knew it was coming. It’s going to be, have to be part of the checklist, right? So any receipts, anything you need for tax purposes, anything that you just need to Wrap up and have organized. Let’s just go ahead and take create the space to get that done So that you can check it off your list because you don’t want to be doing that on April 14th Oh, and your CPA will not want you to do that either No, so you want to be one of the first people not like me last.

Yeah Okay. So the next thing is checking your credit report. We always tell people listen, there’s a I think it’s annualcreditreport. com and allows you to check it once a year for free. Get on there. Even if you know what’s on there, just double check. What if somebody stole your identity? You don’t know.

I’m not saying that did happen. I’m just saying it could. So just get on there, double check and see if there’s anything in there that you didn’t know about. I think that’s important because we’ve had clients that, that they didn’t check it. They would come with us come to us with all of their debts that they thought they had.

And then they. When they checked it, they found stuff that they forgot about or that should have been disputed or whatever. So just, there’s no reason to just not check it real quick. Look at it. And because it’s free.. You know we talk about this. We like to talk about it a lot.

But you’re going to review your insurance policies. It’s our next item on the checklist. Yeah, and make sure they’re up to date. Yeah. Maybe you no longer need full collision on a car. Maybe you do need because you got a new car. So Just really look at what your coverage is. Why are you paying what you’re paying?

And then, Hey, do you have the best deal on it? Like when was the last time you re quoted your insurances? Yeah, absolutely. Good idea. And this is for all the insurance, not just cars. We’re talking life insurance, any other insurance that you have. For example, if you set life insurance when you were 20, you you might want to review that cause you’re a big deal now and you don’t, you might need a little bit more to replace your your income or whatever you want to call it.

So just look at your insurance. It’s. Again, look, let’s set a couple hours or whatever. No, we don’t want to do this all the time, but let’s do it as a way to just close out the year and be really good. Smart CFOs. Okay. Yep. Absolutely. All right. Since it’s the end of the year, this is a great time to look at are you maximizing your retirement contributions?

Have you maxed out? How is that going to change your paycheck these next couple of weeks? Cause I know that happens a lot, but really look at, do you have some extra cash? I know a lot of our business owners, this is the time of year where they kind of change, shift everything. Yeah. They shift all their pay, whether they’re, they take it as a withdrawal.

Whether they take it as a 1099, whether they take it as a W 2, like they really look at all that. So maybe this is a chance for you to double check what’s going on financially in your life and your business. And how do I need to shift? And it’s so good to think about just creating the time and space for this because we know that like logging into those accounts and figuring it out can, is not necessarily something you want to do every month, even when you’re setting your budget.

So this is a good time to just look at it. Remember your password. And See what, how you’ve done. Maybe you had a great year. And then like I said, if there’s anything that you can finish out that you’re allowed to contribute still, let’s maybe look at that. Yeah. Okay. Charitable, everybody’s going to be asking for your charitable donation.

The same thing that the businesses do, or the same thing in line with that. It’s we’re going to, we’re going to put some money in some, Great places for tax purposes, right? Or maybe you’re just at church and it’s that you’re in drive and they’re telling you, this is what we’re going to do with it.

And your heart’s yes. So let’s look at the budget. Let’s look at the numbers and see if there’s any more charitable donations that we want to to set up. Yeah. What are you feeling called to, to contribute to the, at the end of this year, it is the season of giving and why not, right? So make those contributions, make sure you keep the records of those.

So that way, whether it’s personal or business, you have that documentation. Okay. for tax purposes. Yep. Okay. And so our next podcast is going to be about goal setting, right? So what you want to do now as part of your checklist is set a date because this date you’ve already, you’re going to set this date to review everything.

The next day we’re going to put in the calendar is to dream with your money, dream about what’s possible in 2025. And that needs to be a very specific time and date. Not just a, maybe if I get to it, not just a, if Christmas wraps up and I have time after. No. But you know what? I have a really great idea.

Vanessa. Let’s do it. What if they just come to our bootcamp and we’ve already set that date for them? We have a bootcamp guys. It is starts December 30th. Okay. You’ve heard the commercials. You’ve heard us talk about it. It’s all over social media. Come join us the December 30th through January 3rd, the whole week, guys, 30 minutes a day, except Friday is a bigger bang.

It’s fine. You’re going to want to say anyways, but listen, we are really going through All these different categories, all these different topics financially of why why, and how, and what’s going to set you up for 2025. Yep. Okay. So now that was the checklist and it was daunting. It was, there was some big things in there.

There was some not so big things, but what we want you to think about is to acknowledge and celebrate the wins that you did have this year. That’s a big part. That is part of the checklist. Celebrate your wins. We, like we talked about, maybe it wasn’t as amazing as you wanted, but we still want to, whatever we did have, we still want to celebrate that.

Yeah. And I remember last year, my husband, he got his W2 in and he was like but where did it go? And I remember sitting down going, Hey, This is where it went. We went to Portugal. We, our kids are in private school. We tithe this much. We, our daughter played volleyball. Like we, I showed him all the places and all the things that his hard work did for our family.

And he was like, Oh, okay. So sometimes when you get your W2 in and you’re like, Okay. But it doesn’t match the amount of money I have in my bank account. You might feel a little defeated, but this is a really good chance to sit down and go, what did we accomplish? Did we not put anything on credit this year?

Did we pay off a certain amount of debt? Did we save a certain amount? Did we go on this big trip? Really acknowledge that because that is a huge win and you don’t want to forget everything that you did accomplish this year. Yeah. And it’s no matter how big or small it’s important because as we’re, as we were talking about, this is the, this version of you is just going to get better, right?

So we want to own and acknowledge and understand as many little pieces, whether it’s, I stopped using the bills, a bills card, whether it’s, I took the credit cards out of my wallet and and I stopped going to target as much, or I got more excited. I was thinking about Vanessa’s client. How they used to, or, people will want to spend this much, but then when they start seeing the savings amount, they get more excited and they focus on that and they start spending less.

A lot of our clients do that, right? So there’s so many different ways that you may have won and did a good job. And we want you to take time to acknowledge those. Yeah. And what did you learn about yourself this year? So maybe this is the first year you did start your financial journey, right? So think about.

What are all the things that you changed personally and how it affected what you are able to achieve this year? I think that is huge. Like we, we walk our clients through a six month coaching journey. And they ask, why does it take six months and we should tell them. And then when they’re done, they’re like, Oh my gosh, that did take six months.

It had to have, because there’s no way to have done it in a shorter amount of time because you had to get everything set up. You had to have the mindset. the behavior shift, all of that changed in order to be super successful long term. And so think about everything that you went through, everything that you learned this year to change who you are, to be able to accomplish the things that you want.

Yep. Okay. And then last bonus tip is to stay positive. When you’re looking at all of this is not a time we’re not allowing you to beat yourself up. That’s not what this is for. This is just data and we’re going to use this data to do better next year. So stay positive, stay excited. Imagine we were in the room with you and if you start to get ugly, we’re going to tell you stop being ugly to yourself.

So just stay positive and get excited. It’s not worth it. Yeah. And 2025 is going to be awesome. We’re going to be right there with you. We’re going to be having our podcast. You’re going to be, we’re going to be in your earbuds, right? And we’re going to do it. We’re going to do the things together. So just, Stay excited and stay positive.

And you want to start the new year off on the right foot. So you can’t do that being a Debbie Downer. So don’t look back and be like, Oh my gosh, I didn’t do anything that I wanted to do. I’m sure there are some things that you accomplish. You’re just not taking credit for it. So dig down, dig deep, look at those.

And you know what if there really is, if you really can’t find one thing, which I doubt, Let’s set up 2025 so that way you feel really good about it. And Shayna said, that’s just data. Do not shame yourself because it’s not going to get you anywhere. Just use the information to propel you forward to make 2025, like Shayna said, the best year that you can.