Money To-Do Calendar: November

The great personal finance book Grow Your Money!: 101 Easy Tips to Plan, Save, and Invest ends with a list of what financial steps we should take each month. They list the November steps as follows:

• Make sure enough money has been withheld to pay taxes.

• Plan your holiday spending in advance.

My take on these:

1. I actually look over my projected income (and thus taxes owed) as part of my tax prep in March/April. Based on my CPA's recommendations, I make any adjustments at this point to make sure I have enough (but not too much) tax withheld.

2. We do some holiday shopping during the year (as we see things people like -- though I must admit it's often hard not to give them their gifts early) but our actual budget is set at the end of December the previous year as we develop our budget. That said, we fine tune it in early November and if we decide to go over a bit, we have the financial flexibility to do so. It's not like we're going to spend $1 million on gifts anyway...

Comments

[Lawrence]

I've read this book and think it's a great guide for the average American consumer.

[SaveABunch]

If you are business for yourself, withholding enough taxes should be a quarterly (if not monthly) task. Of course if you are working for someone else, the tax removal each pay period should already be in place.

[Rory]

FYI for gifts for adult family members, cousins, brothers, sisters etc - may I suggest this:

http://www.whitehousehistory.org/whha_ornament/ornament.html

it is from the White House historical society - the yearly white house christmas ornament... it is *A-POLITICAL* (nothing to do with politics) but is a very nice ornament with a short writeup about the year's selection.

We got them last year for the adult family members - they all LOVED them greatly.

and it simplifies our shopping - a co-worker organizes purchases so we get a decent discount - comes to lie $13 or $14 per....

anyway - just a thought...