We’ll start our road to Financial Awesomeness with a quick session: today we’ll briefly start our assessment of where we are.
It’s hard to make any progress if you don’t know where you are yet, so it’s a great idea to take a few minutes to start to create a picture of your current financial situation. Yes, that can be scary, but no, it doesn’t have to be too hard.
Here’s what you do, depending on which track you’ve chosen:
- Debt reduction: Make a list of your debts. Simply create a document or spreadsheet, or a paper list, with the debts that you owe. This should include loan payments, outstanding debts that you have to pay regularly, credit cards, monthly payments. If you have time, go ahead and write down the amounts, but if not, just list the names of the debts for now.
- Savings/investment: You should also make a list of your debts (see above). But also list your savings and investment accounts, and their amounts.
That’s it! We’re going to start very easy, and progress from there. With this picture, you can start to create a plan.