The you’re-lazy financial planner

YOUR FINANCIAL DREAM TEAM

David Bach
Author, The Automatic Millionaire; The Automatic Millionaire Homeowner; Start Late, Finish Rich—you get the idea

Alan Corey
Author, A Million Bucks by 30; real-estate investor, entrepreneur

Cheryl Costa
NAPFA-registered financial adviser and principal adviser, Family Financial Architects, Inc.

Ken Diehl
NAPFA-registered financial adviser and president, Cornerstone Financial Planning, Inc.

Day 1
Stop feeling guilty
Don’t worry if you’re not tracking every penny you spend, like your grandma did in her checkbook. “In today’s world, we don’t carry cash. It’s virtually impossible to budget the old-fashioned way,” says Bach.

Day 2
Check your credit report
Get it over with. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the tracking companies are required to provide you with a copy of your credit report, for free, once per year. To order, visit AnnualCreditReport.com or call 877-322-8228. Good credit: 700 or higher. Bad: 600 or below.

Day 3
GO ONLINE
Bach advises you get online access to your banking, investments and retirement accounts. Automate your bill payments online, too—this way, you’ll never pay another late fee.

Day 4
Keep it together
Try to keep all of your money in one bank, and your investments in one brokerage firm. “Banks and brokerage firms rate their clients,” Bach says. “So the more you have in one place, the better you’re treated.”

Day 5
Pay yourself first
Before we go on with more basics, we gotta talk retirement. Bach recommends an interesting way to think about investing: Calculate what you earn an hour, and contribute one hour’s worth of pay every day to your 401k. (For the flip side, see “401ks are for suckers,”)

Day 6
See if your employer offers a Roth 401k
It’s the traditional 401k mixed with a Roth IRA. Your money grows tax-free and you can pull it out tax-free when you retire, but you don’t get a tax deduction.

Self-employed? Check out a solo 401k plan. We like Fidelity (personal.fidelity.com).

Day 7
Move your 401k funds into target-dated mutual funds
In a mutual fund, a fund manager takes a pool of money (including yours) and buys stocks and bonds. A target-dated mutual fund makes risky investments when you’re young. Examples? Vanguard and T. Rowe Price.

Day 8
Check your asset-allocation
How is your 401k money invested? You should have a mix of stocks, bonds and equities. Diehl recommends a mix of 60% equities—stocks, stock mutual funds—and 40% a fixed-income combo of bonds and money market accounts, e.g., things with fixed interest.

Day 9
Track your SPENDING
Okay, enough about 401ks. How much do you take out at ATMs or charge to your card? Find out with the 30-day free trial at Automatic Money Manager (automaticmoneymanager.com). Affiliated with thousands of banks, it will track on a dashboard every electronic transaction.

Day 10
Determine your latte factor
Coffee, cigarettes, martinis, bottled water—if you spend $10 a day on things like this, that’s $300 a month and $3,600 a year! Visit Finish Rich’s website (finishrich.com) to calculate your latte factor.

Day 11
Identify and reduce monthly expenses
Take stock of your macro costs: food, rent, utilities, etc. Do you need the premium channels? Do you have to take a cab home from work three times a week? Try to eliminate one—just one—monthly luxury this month.

Day 12
talk ’em down!
Revolving expenses are month-to-month fees: dating websites, gym memberships. These are negotiable, Corey says. Threaten that you want to quit or will switch to a competitor. You’ll usually be transferred to the retaining department, where they may lower your payment.

Day 13
google “online coupon”
This tip is duh-obvious, but it took Corey to point it out: Hundreds of stores offer $5, $10 or $20 off items bought online if you’re smart enough to search. Type it in and see what comes up.

Day 14
Mortgage holders: This one’s for you
Switch to a biweekly payment option for your mortgage, rather than paying once per month. Pay half every two weeks and you’ll save so much on interest that you’ll pay off your 30-year mortgage in 23 years! (Along with some fees.)

Day 15
Consolidate your credit cards
Go to CreditCards.com and apply for a new one that will have a 0% interest rate for six months to a year on balance transfers. Transfer your high-balance cards to the 0% interest card. But: Do not cancel the old credit cards. Hide them. Your credit will look better.

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