Financial Doing Archives - Page 5 of 5 - Clark Hourly Financial Planning

As of Tuesday you can now get your full Social Security Statement online. It includes your lifetime earnings history and estimates of disability benefits you could receive should you become disabled. It also lists benefits your family could receive if something were to happen to you. It provides much more information that was previously available online.

Last year the government stopped mailing the statements, which saved $70 million dollars. Statements will be mailed again, but only to individuals who are over 60.

Getting the online Social Security Statement is very easy; I got mine in about six minutes. Go to https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/ and click on the button that says “Sign In or Create an Account.”

You will need to:

* set up an account by creating a log in id and password

* set up a few questions and answers in case you forget your password

* put in your basic information such as name, address, phone number, date of birth

* answer multiple choice questions to verify your identity, (for example; who is the lender on your mortgage, what is the make and model of your car, etc.)

When your statement pops up you can print it or save it as a PDF.

Keep your login id and password in a secure place, you will want to review your Social Security statement on an annual basis to make sure that the earnings information is correct and use the retirement benefit estimate figures when doing your retirement planning.

Financial “To-Do” items

Often times, when I call someone they say to me “It’s funny that you called, because I have been meaning to call you” or “You are on my To-Do list”. I have heard these types of comments for many years. I have a theory about this. My theory is that just about everyone has important financial To-Do items sitting on their To-Do list.

Generally, the items at the very top of a To-Do list are items that are urgent, like fixing a leaking roof; or they have a looming deadline, like buying a birthday gift. Whereas, the financial To-Dos, such as “what should I do about college planning?”, have a tendency to rest near the top because they are important but, just can’t quite seem to get all the way to the top of the list because their deadline isn’t just around the corner. Usually something has to happen to nudge that To-Do higher on the list, hopefully it isn’t the fact that college suddenly has a looming deadline.

The definition of “To-Done”

When it is time for you to go to the dentist, you put that on your To-Do list. Once you have seen the dentist, you check it off – To-Done! Does that mean that you never go see the dentist again? Of course not. When it is time for you to set your next appointment, you will put it on the To-Do list again. The same holds true for financial planning – it isn’t a one and done type of thing. While there are a few financial To-Do items that you do once and forget it, most financial topics need to be reviewed on a periodic basis. For example, portfolios need to be rebalanced, employee benefits have annual enrollment periods, taxes are filed once a year, etc.

There are a variety of reasons people don’t tackle their financial To-Dos. Many people lack either the time, confidence, or desire to handle their finances, for those people, professional advisors are a good solution. And for others, who want to tackle some of this on their own, I hope to provide some simple To-Dos within some of my blog posts because I find it very encouraging as a financial advisor when I find consumers who have an interest in financial planning. I hope that these posts are of help to consumers that are looking for assistance from an advisor as well as consumers that are looking to manage their own financial affairs.

Tag Archives: Financial Doing

It’s on your To-Do. Let’s get it To-Done!