WASHINGTON — April is an exhausting month.
On top of pulling practical jokes (April Fool’s), honoring Gaia (Earth Day), settling debts with Uncle Sam (Tax Day) and dragging your kids to the cubicle (Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day), April is also a time to re-evaluate your personal finances (Financial Literacy Month).
While there are countless articles on how you can better your relationship with money, let’s peer into the habits of financial planners and those known for their personal finance savvy.
Financial Literacy Month conveniently coincides with Tax Day, which makes it easy for people to revisit their finances and plan ahead.
“Because it’s right after Tax Day, I have everything ready,” said Linsey Knerl, a blogger at Wisebread, one of the most popular personal finance blogs.
Knerl, of Tekamah, Neb., started documenting on Wisebread her journey out of an $80,000 gambling debt her ex-husband racked up.
Because she is expecting a new baby, she’s making an “optimistic plan for the worst case scenario” this Financial Literacy Month.
“If I were to get sick and couldn’t pay the bills — because I’m responsible for that — I have that written down so my husband can take over, such as passwords and what bills are on autopay,” she said. “Everything’s recorded.”
Filing taxes also creates a natural segue to talk to kids about money, said Pat Seaman, spokeswoman for the National Endowment for Financial Education in Denver.
“Every year, it’s a chance to see what all your income is, where your expenses are,” she said. “My goal is to help [my daughters] transition from me taking care of them financially to them taking care of themselves financially.”
For Bruce Young, a certified financial planner at Financial Finesse Inc., he and his wife took a hard look at their retirement plans and goals.
“This was really the first time we’ve sat down and put pen to paper on what we want to do,” he said.
Young, 48, learned through this process that his wife, 44, wants to retire within five years, an option they’re considering — just not in California. And coincidentally enough, shortly after discussing this, a real estate agent called them up and told them they could sell their Manhattan Beach home for roughly how much they bought it.
While reviewing their credit card and bank statements, Chris Rhim, president of Green View Advisors in Washington, said he and his wife found unauthorized debit card transactions they missed because they occurred around the winter holiday season. These charges ranged from a couple hundred dollars to more than a thousand.
“It’s money that you’re losing, and it can also impact your credit report,” he said.
In Chicago, Christine Benz, personal finance director at Morningstar Inc., said she is following her money philosophy by keeping her finances simple.
“Even if the market can lend a helping hand,” she said, “the biggest driver is to live within means. It’s plain vanilla, but it’s underrated.”
She said the only major financial decision she and her husband made recently is looking to converting their traditional IRAs to Roth IRAs.
Bottom line is: These people seem to have a firm grasp on their financial situations.
For James Shagawat who works in wealth management at Baron Financial Group in New York, it’s just “more of the same.”
“Every month is financial literacy month for me,” he said.