Money To-Do Calendar: March

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 March steps as follows:

• Begin making plans and reservations for summer vacation.
• Prepare a projection of your expected retirement income and expenses.

My take on these:

1. We have two kinds of vacations -- those we do every year and ones that are "special". Every year we go see my family as well as my wife's family (two separate trips). Plus we may or may not add an extra (special) vacation in there (like when we went to Disney a few years ago or when we went to Niagara Falls last year.) This is the year I think we will finally make our often-put-off trip to Chicago -- I'm just not sure when. Next year, I think we'll take the kids to Washington, DC.

2. The book says that projecting retirement income and expenses is an annual event, but I think that's only if you're approaching it within 10 years or so. Otherwise, you can do it every two or three years. As for me, I've set my retirement number (which included looking at my expenses -- btw, here's how I did it), have a guess as to when I'll retire, and even have a general idea of what I'll do in retirement.

How about you? Are you working on these this month?

Comments

[Budgeting in the Fun Stuff]

1. Due to my husband's graduate school work, if we can take a vacation, it will have to be planned last minute.
2. For the next 15 years, we are aiming for at least $2 million in retirement accounts and savings and a pension...we'll look at that again in 15 years...10 years before we can retire.