Single Step Personal Finance Challenge
By Pinyo • Jul 18th, 2008 • Category: Financial PlanningOn Monday, Mrs. Micah wrote about Single Step Personal Finance Challenge and I thought that it was a fantastic idea. Many times, we look at the big picture and find it so overwhelming that we don’t do what we should. For example, running a marathon is out of reach for many of us — it’s certainly is for me. But I could certainly jog one mile a day for 26 days to cover the same distance.
Photo by vu bui via flickr
This concept is no different in personal finance. I mentioned this in my snowflaking post the other day: If you find the whole concept of financial planning too overwhelming, just commit to learn and apply one concept at a time. If you are looking for a place to start, here are 88 financial concepts that you can explore. Just go through the list one at a time and eventually you’ll learn all of them.
What about my single step?
I wrote about estate planning in the past, but I haven’t committed myself to sit down and do it yet. I have my copy of Suze Orman’s Will & Trust Kit sitting on my desk for a long time now. So my single step is to go through the program and finish my estate planning…I’ll shoot for within 2 weeks.
Update: Okay, I haven’t look at it so long that I can’t find the CD. The good thing is the program still work without it. Darn.
Here are other bloggers’ single step:
- Reasons to Write a Last Will and Testament at The Wisdom Journal
- Mrs. Micah’s Single Step Personal Finance Challenge at The Dangling Conversation
- Single Step Personal Finance Challenge - Pay Off Remaining Medical Debt at My Two Dollars
- Personal finance challenge at We Like Money
- My single step personal finance challenge at Gather Little By Little
- Organize Your Finances: Take Just One Step at Prime Time Money
- House insurance challenge at Plonkee Money
- First Step Personal Finance Challenge: Budget My Last Paychecks at Green Panda Treehouse
Are you willing to do just one thing to improve your finances? If yes, join the movement and share your single step with us.
estate planning.. just one more thing I need to do.. add it to the list.
Nice article. It makes so much sense, breaking something up into smaller, manageable pieces. I do this, too. Not only do I get a short term feeling of accomplishment, as the pieces I complete link together to get the “big financial problem” completed, it feels great!
I stumbled.
Lisa
Estate planning is a great goal to,especially since you have a family to think about. I look forward to seeing your post on that.
It was such a huge relief when we finally did our estate planning. It was expensive, for us, as we have a disabled [adult] child, and we needed to structure a fairly elaborate Living Trust. It’s in place, now, though; we sent copies of everything to an out of state relative, and have discussed the content of the trust with our kids. Lastly, having established the trust, we now have most of our assets, including our home, in the name of the trust, which makes everything much easier for those “left behind”.
I would say establishing a living trust, even a simplistic one, should be a very high priority and first step for EVERYONE–whether or not you have a family, or significant assets.
Is it too late to join this wonderful project?
I would probably save money for my emergency fund before I start with estate planning..the latter’s to expensive!
@Lisa — Thank you. Little by little is the way to do it.
@Jadin — Great point, especially the last part: “I would say establishing a living trust, even a simplistic one, should be a very high priority and first step for EVERYONE -– whether or not you have a family, or significant assets.”
@The Digerati Life — Sure, jump right in. I’d love to hear your small step.
@Sam — Establishing an emergency fund is a good small step goal.
Let us know how the estate planning goes. This still in the future for me so I could use a nice roadmap.
Thanks for sharing my single step post.
I think my single step will be to start writing some guest posts for other bloggers. This way I can drive traffic to my site, increase readership and also increase my networking with the bloggers I am working with