The 2024 Year End Money Checklist (Do These Before Year End!)

In this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to talk about the 2024 year in money checklist. How Andrew Can Help You: Don't let another year pass by without making significant strides toward your dreams. "Master Your Money Goals" is your pathway to a future where your aspirations are not just wishes but realities. Enroll now and make this year count! Join The Master Money Newsletter where you will become smarter with your money in 5 minutes or less per week Here! Learn to invest by joining Index Fund Pro! This is Andrew’s course teaching you how to invest! Watch The Master Money Youtube Channel! , Ask Andrew a question on Instagram or TikTok. Learn how to get out of Debt by joining our Free Course Leave Feedback or Episode Requests here. Thanks to Our Amazing Sponsors for supporting The Personal Finance Podcast. Shopify: Shopify makes it so easy to sell. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/pfp Chime: Start your credit journey with Chime. Sign-up takes only two minutes and doesn’t affect your credit score. Get started at chime.com/ Monarch Money: Get an extended 30 day free trial at monarchmoney.com/pfp Thanks to Fundrise for Sponsoring the show! Invest in real estate going to fundrise.com/pfp Indeed: Start hiring NOW with a SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to upgrade your job post at Indeed.com/personalfinance Thanks to Policy Genius for Sponsoring the show! Go to policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quote. Right now, my listeners can get a free 2-week trial at 1password.com/PERSONALFINANCE to help secure their growing business. The Rundown by Public.com—your daily financial news podcast. Listen now: The Rundown Podcast Go to joindeleteme.com/pfp20 for 20% off! Links Mentioned in This Episode: Why You Should Negotiate Every Bill With Nicole Lapin How to Negotiate Your New Job Offer to Get The Most Money and Benefits! How to Invest More Outside of Retirement Accounts, 529 Strategies, & Dividend Growth - Money Q&A 10 Incredible Benefits of a Taxable Brokerage Account! How Many Credit Cards Should I Have? - Money Q&A Connect With Andrew on Social Media: Instagram TikTok Twitter Master Money Website Master Money Youtube Channel Free Guides: The Stairway to Wealth: The Order of Operations for your Money How to Negotiate Your Salary The 75 Day Money Challenge Get out Of Debt Fast Take the Money Personality Quiz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Andrew Giancola?

  Longtime listeners know, one of the best ways to build wealth is to increase your income. And one way to do that is by starting a side hustle. And that's one reason why I absolutely love Whatnot. Now, my son and I, we love collecting sports cards. And we've used Whatnot to buy and sell cards. It's been a really fun way to enjoy something we love together. Now, Whatnot is a live shopping platform where people sell everything from sports cards to clothing, electronics, and collectibles. And what's really cool about it is you can turn something you're passionate about into a business. And you could do it right from your phone. You don't even need a storefront or a website. So whether you're looking to make some extra money or find great deals on your next shopping trip, check out Whatnot.

• 0:44Andrew Giancola?

  Search Whatnot, that's W H A T N O T, in the App Store. Download and start selling right away. When I started the Personal Finance Podcast, I had no idea how big it could become. I just knew I had something I wanted to share, so I started putting it online. And looking back, I definitely wish I would have started a decade earlier. One of the horror parts about building something online, though, is making it look professional. A website used to mean hiring a developer, figuring out design, and potentially spending thousands of dollars. In fact, on my website, I spent tens of thousands of dollars. That's what impressed me when playing around with Hostinger's AI website builder.

• 1:27Andrew Giancola?

  I told it what kind of website I wanted, and I built the first version in minutes. No coding, no designer or developer needed. And Hostinger doesn't stop at launch. Their AI can help with SEO, website copy, email marketing, and more. Plus, your domain, website, email, and marketing can all live in one account, with plans starting at just $3 every single month. Hostinger builds your vision step by step. Create your website today. Go to hostinger.com/pfp and use code PFP for 10% off now. On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, the 2024 Year End Money Checklist.

• 2:24Andrew Giancola?

  What's up everybody and welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew, founder of MasterMoney.co. And today on the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to be diving into the 2024 Ultimate Year End Money Checklist. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join that Master Money newsletter by going to mastermoney.co/newsletter. And don't forget to follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or whatever podcast player you love listening to this podcast on. And if you want to help out the show, consider leaving a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Now, today, we're going to be diving into

• 3:06Andrew Giancola?

  the Year End Money Checklist. And we do this every single year to talk through some of the things that you might want to do before 2024 ends. Now, if you want a copy of the Year End Money Checklist, if you just go to mastermoney.co/resources, we actually have a written copy of that that you can check out and utilize for your own personal finances. Now, today, we're going to go through all of these. There is actually 22 items on the Year End Money Checklist. And what I want you to note up front is some of these may not pertain to you. Some of these may pertain to a specific lifestyle or specific situation, but a lot of these will pertain to you. And it's going to help you save on taxes. It's going to help you redo some of your expenses that you're spending every single year. It's going to help you think through your

• 3:51Andrew Giancola?

  net worth and some of your financial planning for 2025. Now is the time to start preparing your money goals so that we can start to achieve some of those money goals. And in a couple of episodes, we're going to be talking through your money goals and how to actually put those together. So I want you to first, take care of your house and get your house in order for 2024. Then we're going to look forward to 2025. I love doing this episode every single year. You guys love listening to it. So I'm not going to waste any more time. Without further ado, let's get into Number one is I want you to check in on your money automations. Now, usually, we want to look at our money automations and review them every single quarter. So the first thing we're going to look at is our savings automations. If you're using the bucket method and you are trying to save towards some of those savings buckets,

• 4:36Andrew Giancola?

  review those and think through these savings buckets and say, hey, do I want to increase some of these savings buckets? Do I want to allocate more dollars to new categories? And how do I want to think about this? Or maybe you go and look at your savings buckets and you've been automating it for so long, you realize, hey, I've got six months in my emergency fund. Well, that's a huge win. Pop some champagne. It's almost New Year's, my friends. We can get that champagne going early. And what I want you to do is go and review all of your savings buckets. Maybe you have bigger goals coming up that you didn't start saving for. Like you have kids maybe who are on their way to college, or you have kids who are preparing for a wedding, maybe. Or you want to save for a down payment on a house next year. You want to start saving for that new car because you see your car is starting to get run down

• 5:19Andrew Giancola?

  and you know this is going to be coming down the pipeline. All of these are going to be really, really important. So first, we want to review our savings goals. Next, we want to review our bill pay automations. Look at your bills. Make sure they're getting paid on time. Look at those automations. See how much progress you were making with some of those bills. Then we want to review some of our debt payments. How are those looking? What is the progress with our debt payments? Do we see those going down over time? Are you in credit card debt and that is increasing every single month? Well, that's a problem. We need to increase the automated contributions towards some of that debt so that we can make sure that we are paying this debt down. We are trying to gauge where we are here at the year end and we want to make sure that we are on track. Lastly is investments, one of the most important parts.

• 6:02Andrew Giancola?

  If you do not invest your money already, make the end of 2024 and 2025 the year that you start. I'm going to tell you this right now. You will never, ever be able to retire if you do not invest your dollars. Why? Because A, you need to be able to outpace inflation. That is number one. Number two is you need your money to grow and compound over time. If it does not grow and compound over time, you will never get financially ahead. If you're hoarding cash under a mattress or you're just putting it in the bank and checking your savings. You are never going to be able to get ahead. You need to invest your dollars in things like low cost index funds and investing it in your retirement accounts. Roth IRA, 401k, taxable brokerage.

• 6:42Andrew Giancola?

  You need to make sure that you are taking advantage of accounts and reviewing this every single year at a minimum. Okay, these automations are very important. I like for you to review automations quarterly to make sure you're on track. And if you really want to optimize, you could review them monthly too. But the point of automation is to reduce the amount of time that you are spending on your dollars. I'd rather you spend more time on things that are going to increase your income or doing things that you love or spending time with your family or on hobbies or traveling. All of those are more important than you getting into spreadsheets and trying to dig into your budget. This is why we automate our money. Now, if you're interested in automating your money, Money on Autopilot is coming out early 2025. We have already started working on the modules. We've already started recording a bunch of those. This is going to be our complete course on how to automate your money.

• 7:26Andrew Giancola?

  So get ready, it is coming. If you want early access, make sure you are on the Master Money Newsletter because that is where the early access announcement is going to come out. And folks who get early access to Money on Autopilot are going to get access to me and some group coaching situations where we're going to do multiple group coaching situations for the people who sign up on that early access. So it's going to be really, really cool stuff that we have going on there. I am so excited for this because this is all of our work coming together in exactly how we want it laid out. This is an entire money system where you can automate your entire money system. I am so excited to introduce this to you guys next year. Really, really pumped for this. It's taken longer than we wanted to only because I'm a perfectionist and I want to get it right.

• 8:08Andrew Giancola?

  So making sure we're doing this the right way is really, really important. But that early access group is going to get a lot of really cool perks as we do this. So make sure you're joining the Master Money Newsletter. Just go to mastermoney.co/newsletter if you're not. Number two, after you make sure you're looking at your money automations, number two is cutting costs. Now, when we cut costs, it is very, very, very important that we think through the big three first. Number one is housing. Now, a lot of people may be getting into new apartments and/or new housing next year if you're a rent And if you are a renter, I want you to think through your housing and make sure you are spending 30% or less on your total housing costs. If you're not, you're looking at a situation where you're most likely going to be house poor

• 8:53Andrew Giancola?

  unless you are reducing some of the amount of money that you're spending. So when it comes to housing, 30% max, 25% is preferable. And if you're looking to become financially independent in 10 years or less, I want you to spend 20%. That's the way that it has to go of your gross income on your housing expenses. Next is food. Now, food is something that most people will overspend and they just have no idea they're even doing this. Obviously, food is a necessity, shelter is a necessity, transportation, which is the next one, is also a necessity. There is not a perfect number in percentages, but right around 15% can work for food. It just depends on exactly where you land, where you live, and how much you are spending. Like, say for example, you want to live a Whole Foods lifestyle. Well, I would say that is some of the most valuable dollars that you could spend is on your health.

• 9:38Andrew Giancola?

  Do not let somebody like me say 15% is on food and then you go backwards and you're eating Kraft macaroni and cheese every single day. No, I want you spending dollars on your health. That is something that I do not think twice about. And so when it comes to these types of things, make sure you have a list of items that you are willing to spend more money on, and I want you to do that. I want you to use your money to create freedom for your life. I want you to increase your health. I want you to increase convenience in your life. There are so many cool ways to spend money, so make sure you just keep that in mind. Transportation. When it comes to transportation, I guarantee a lot of you listening right now are spending too much money on transportation. The way that you buy a car is, number one is cash.

• 10:19Andrew Giancola?

  Cash is always king when it comes to buying depreciating assets, but most of us cannot pay 30, 40, 50,000 dollars for a vehicle. So instead, we have a couple of numbers that I want you to remember. You want to get 20% down and/or get gap insurance, one of those two things when you start to buy a car. Preferably 20% down because if you buy a brand new car or even a used car and it gets into an accident and it has a big depreciation hit right when you drive it off the lot, all of a sudden now you are in the hole instead of actually being able to recoup all your insurance money. So you could actually lose money on that. Secondly, though, is I don't want your auto loan to be Longer than four years and I don't want you spending more than 7% of your total incomes. If you make a hundred grand a year, you can spend $7,000 per year on car payments. Okay, that's just the simple math of how this works out. Most people spend more than that.

• 11:04Andrew Giancola?

  This is a reasonable amount, though, in your household income, depending on what's going on. Now, let's say, for example, you and your spouse are car owners. Well, what I would do, and this is typically how I used to do it, is I'd make sure one car gets paid off. Then I can buy the next one so that those car payments are still within reason within the household. If you both have car payments, it's really difficult to hit this number sometimes, depending on what the household income is. So let's say you both make 50 grand per year. I'm just doing this for easy math, okay? If you both make 50 grand per year, you can spend $7,000 per year on car payments, but the car loan cannot be longer than four years, okay? So you can spend $7,000 per year, that's well over $500 per month. Most car payments in the US right now are $750 per month, and there are two people in the household that have that car payment. What I want you to do is reduce that down.

• 11:50Andrew Giancola?

  Now, you're going to hold cars for a longer period of time. Our goal is for you to hold it for at least 10 years or less. So that is the last number is 10. So 20, 4, 7, 10. I want you to hold it for 10 years if you can. That is the number one goal most of the time. And so cutting costs on transportation is going to be really important, but making sure you can also afford that stuff. Now, how else can you cut back on costs? Is you can check subscriptions. So there are a lot of different ways to check subscriptions, but I have done this before. Every year end I do this, and when I go and look through my subscriptions, embarrassingly, a lot of times I'm cutting back $50, $100 per month. Well, what does that equal per year? $1,200 per year? What can you put that towards your freedom? Or you could put it towards a vacation? Or you can put it towards things that you actually value in life? And so subscriptions are a very small thing,

• 12:33Andrew Giancola?

  but they are something that will add up over time. And if you're investing an extra $1,200 per year, that is a massive difference in terms of how much money you will have by retirement. Three is negotiating your bills. I want you to negotiate your bills as much as you possibly can if you're trying to cut back costs. This is going to be something that you can negotiate your rent. You can negotiate things like your cable bill. So speaking of cable bill, I looked at my cable bill last month and it went up significantly. It actually, I got an alert and it went up to $260. Now I have internet and cable for home. And originally, when I signed up, I had the new customer discount and it was $110. Well, now we're at $260. Ya boy is gonna start negotiating.

• 13:16Andrew Giancola?

  And so what I did is I called up the old company and I said, hey, this bill's a little too crazy for me. And they said, oh, okay, we'll take you down to 180. I said, still a little too crazy for me. I think I'm just gonna go ahead and walk. They took me down to 150. I said, still way too crazy for me. Get me down even further. And now there's this negotiation tactics. We have episodes on this if you want to check it out. But I went through the negotiation tactics and we got down to 120 bucks. That is a massive savings per year. And so if you can negotiate some of the big ticket item bills like that, that you have subscriptions that you're going to be keeping, like internet, for example, we all need internet. You need internet to run a business. You need internet to even go to school nowadays. And so making sure that you have that set up and negotiate your bills is really important. You can negotiate your rent.

• 14:00Andrew Giancola?

  You can renegotiate your leases if you want to. There's big ticket items that you can negotiate. I want you to try to do that and do it more in 2025. Now, look at the rest of your spending. Is there anything that is not bringing you value? Because this is how we spend our dollars, only on things that we value. And here's a quick way to find out. Is the thing making you free? Meaning, is it providing freedom for your life? Things like investing dollars into investment accounts. That's going to help provide freedom for your life. Is it making your life better? Number two, spending money on health, spending money on convenience, improving your life. Three, is it making you happy? Spending more on your hobbies. Maybe you love fishing and you're spending more on fishing or you love fitness. You're spending more on fitness or you love pickleball like ya boy loves pickleball.

• 14:42Andrew Giancola?

  And he just bought a brand new $300 paddle, but it makes me happy. So if that is something that you do, make sure that it makes you happy. Think about that as well. Number four is, does it make you more money? Are you investing those dollars so that it can improve your money situation? Improve your assets, improve a number of different things? You can do this with anything in life, but make sure you were doing that four-step evaluation before you spend your dollars on things that value. Outside of necessities, obviously, we need shelter. We need food, all that kind of stuff. But outside of that, we need to make sure we are spending dollars on things that we are looking at. All right, number three on the year-end money checklist is, we're gonna look at our net worth statement and we want to do this with whatever net worth tool we utilize, okay? Now, I've used a number of them in the past. I've used a spreadsheet. I've used in power, which is a free tool.

• 15:27Andrew Giancola?

  And now I use Monarch Money. And Monarch Money is a really great platform that has a great net worth tool. So if you go to monarchmoney.com/pfp, you can get a discount on there. They're a sponsor of this show, but I think they are an amazing tool, which is why I approve of them being a sponsor of this show. And so one thing I want you to look at first is make sure that your net worth is improving this year. So you may have started off with a negative net worth this year. You've heard our episodes on how to dig yourself out of that hole. And maybe it's still negative, but it's improving. It is less of a negative than it was at the beginning of the year. That is A okay. You may have started with a low net worth and now you're starting to build your net worth. And you want to see that going up over time. If you start to take on more liabilities, you're going to see your net worth going down over time. We do not want to take on more liabilities than adding to our net worth. Okay.

• 16:12Andrew Giancola?

  Two, you want to make sure your liabilities are going down. Your liabilities are getting paid off over time. Now, maybe you bought a new car this year, but you bought it within the correct parameters. Then your liabilities may have gone up over the last couple of months. That's okay, but you got to make sure that you can afford and it's within your affordability box. That's really, really important. Three, make sure your assets are going up. I want to see those assets increasing every single year. Your stocks, your retirement accounts, your emergency fund. All of these are going to be really important for 2025. Make sure you're getting ready. Now, I think 2025, you know, your boy doesn't do predictions, but I think in 2025, we may see a pretty good market. We'll see what happens though. We have no idea what's actually going to happen. So don't listen to me or my predictions. Don't listen to anybody or their predictions because they don't know.

• 16:56Andrew Giancola?

  But if I was a prediction man, I would say that I think 2025 is going to be a pretty good year in the market. Number four is give to charity. Now charitable contributions are a tax deduction. So if you are looking at a larger tax bill and you know that there are causes that you believe in, that you've been meaning to give more to, I love increasing my charitable deductions at the year end. And so I typically will give away 10% of my income. That's just something I have done since I was young. It is part of my faith and how I actually live my life. And so I've always given away 10% of my income. And so for a lot of people out there who have never done charitable contributions, this is something that it's a win-win situation. A, you are improving causes that you believe in. Okay.

• 17:37Andrew Giancola?

  B, you are giving your dollars and putting your dollars behind something instead of just talking about it. If there's something that you think is unjust in the world, or there's something you believe is not correct in this world, guess what? You can put your dollars behind it. Put your money where your mouth is. Stop just talking about it all day long. Instead, you can do something about it. And so that's the second thing that you can do. The third thing, though, is with charitable contributions, we can make a massive impact in this world. If we all collectively actually gave charitable contributions, we can make a massive impact. So I really, truly believe in giving charitable contributions because it's really, really important to think through what you can do. Next is you can do an annual gift tax exclusion. So if you utilize the annual gift tax exclusion,

• 18:20Andrew Giancola?

  it's up to $18,000 per person in 2024. It goes up in 2025 to $19,000. And so if you made way too much money this year, this is for my ballers out there, that you can give more money on this annual gift tax exclusion to family or friends to reduce your taxable estate. That's another thing to put on your checklist. Now, I'm not going to spend a ton of time on that because that's a smaller portion of our audience, but that is something that you can do. Make sure you have it on your checklist and put that on your vision board, my friends. If you're not there yet, I'm going to use that annual gift tax exclusion every single year. I'm going to have 20 grand to give away to my kids every single year. Number six is look into funding a 529 education account. Now, I like flexible 529 accounts. We've had a ton of episodes talking about how these work.

• 19:00Andrew Giancola?

  But if you are saving for your kids' college, this is a great way to start to plan for educational expenses. And this can include K through 12 tuition. This can also include college, graduate school, all those different things. And if they don't go to college, you can also use it for trade school. If they want to be an electrician or a plumber, or maybe they want to go and do some other work, you can also use it for trade school. So check your state tax breaks. But this is a great thing to do at year end is look at the 529 plan. It is something I absolutely love to look at every single year. Number seven is look at and fund a health savings account. Now, for 2024, if you have a high deductible health plan, you must have a high deductible health plan before you can do this. For individual coverage, you can put $4,150 in. For family coverage, you can put $8,300 there.

• 19:47Andrew Giancola?

  And the catch-up contribution is $1,000. Now, the minimum deductible for individual coverage is $1,600 and $3,200 for family coverage. The maximum out-of-pocket is $8,050 for individual coverage and $16,100 for family coverage. Now, the thing about the HSA is most people do not know that you can invest your dollars in the HSA. This is why it's such a powerful account. It's a health savings account, but I don't want you to use it for healthcare until way later down the line and/or I really want you to use it as a retirement account. We call it a super retirement account because money goes in tax-free, it'll grow tax-free when you invest it, and you can pull the money out tax-free as long as you have a qualified medical expense.

• 20:31Andrew Giancola?

  And those qualified medical expense lists are growing very rapidly every single year. The IRS is very generous with the qualified medical expense. And cool thing is, Amazon has a new feature now that if you go and search specific items, it'll actually have a little tag next to those items that says "HSA eligible." Love that new feature, Amazon. Shout out Jeff Bezos, who doesn't run it anymore, but shout out to him. Really, really cool stuff there that they have that there. So you can see all these different interesting items. There was something yet the other day that I saw on Amazon that I could not believe was part of the HSA list, but it was. And I cannot remember what it is off the top of my head right now, but there are some really cool, unique things that you would never think are on the HSA list. Now, where do you open an HSA? I like Fidelity. I think it's the best place to open one.

• 21:14Andrew Giancola?

  They have the best investment options and they are the cheapest. Those are the two greatest things about Fidelity. They don't sponsor me. They have, I have nothing to do with Fidelity. I just think they have the best options for an HSA. Let's jump into a break and then we're going to get into retirement planning next. My relationship with money has changed a lot over the years. Early on, I thought building wealth was about making more money. Now, I know it's really about having clarity. When you know exactly where your money is going and whether you're on track, you make better decisions. That's one of the reasons I love Monarch. It's the personal finance app that tracks everything from your accounts and investments to your savings, goals, and spending, so you can see your entire financial picture in one.

• 21:57Andrew Giancola?

  One place. One habit that's made a huge difference for me is my five-minute drill every single morning. I open Monarch, check my spending, investments, cash flow, and net worth, and I'm done in just a few minutes. It gives me confidence that nothing is slipping through the cracks. I also love the AI weekly recap because it'll flag spending changes, upcoming expenses, or shifts in my net worth before they become a problem. Instead of reacting after the fact, I can make adjustments early. It really feels like having a financial advisor in your pocket. Write your own money story with Monarch. Use code PFP at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first

• 22:39Andrew Giancola?

  year at monarch.com with code PFP. If you've been listening to this show for a while, you know it's not just me anymore. It takes a great team behind the scenes to make everything happen. And if I had to hire someone tomorrow, I'd want someone who could jump right in and make an impact. That's why I'd use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. When workplace chaos hits, Indeed Sponsored Jobs helps you reach qualified candidates faster. Your job gets boosted in search results, so you're spending less time searching and more time interviewing the right people. Plus, you only pay for results, which I absolutely love. Sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored posts. That's a huge advantage when you're

• 23:24Andrew Giancola?

  trying to grow your business. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all of your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is the job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It's kind of amazing how much can change in just a single year. Every summer, the kids A little bigger, a little more independent,

• 24:09Andrew Giancola?

  and life looks a little different than it did the year before. And it reminds me that while we can't predict the future, we can prepare for it. That's one of the reasons I like PolicyGenius. See, PolicyGenius isn't an insurance company. They're an online marketplace that lets you compare life insurance quotes from some of America's top insurers, side by side, for free. And their licensed team helps you compare coverage, prices, and terms, answers your questions, and even handles the paperwork so you can get the right policy without the hassle. For me, having life insurance isn't about expecting something to happen. It's about knowing my family is protected so I can actually enjoy these moments together instead of worrying about what comes next. And with PolicyGenius,

• 24:53Andrew Giancola?

  you can find 20-year life insurance policies starting at just $276 a year for $1 million of coverage. Head to PolicyGenius.com to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you can save. That's PolicyGenius.com. All right, next, we have reviewing retirement planning. So I want you to review your contributions to ensure you're taking full advantage of your tax advantage accounts. Now, for 2024, if you're looking at maxing out a Roth IRA or a traditional IRA, you could put $7,000 in the Roth IRA. If you're looking at your pre-tax accounts or your 401k, for 2024, it is going to be $23,000 for your pre-tax accounts,

• 25:34Andrew Giancola?

  and the catch-up contribution is $7,500 for your 401ks. Now, this is Roth 401k, traditional 401k, 403Bs, all those things. For the simple IRA, it's 16 grand. And so all of those are something that you gotta think through as you start to look at this. So if you are age 50 or older and you haven't taken advantage of that catch-up contribution yet, maybe you've contributed to your 401k, but you haven't done your catch-up contribution, now is a great time to do that. You can get that $7,500 added to your 401k and start to accelerate your path there. Number nine is to check your tax withholding. If you are a business owner, you have a side hustle, whatever else, I want you to adjust your tax withholding if you have a side income or capital gains to avoid underpayment penalty.

• 26:17Andrew Giancola?

  So you do not get in trouble. That is one big thing to do, but also consider making additional withholdings on a year end bonus or W2 to catch up on the taxes owed if you need to. So those are two things that you can do is make sure you check that tax withholding that you actually contributed enough over the course of the year. If you don't know how to do that, talk to your CPA. If you don't have a CPA and you don't know how to do that, you need one. Make sure that you get one, especially if you're a business owner. It's really important to have one on your side. Next is you can look at something like tax loss harvesting. So if you want to offset capital gains with capital losses in your taxable account, tax loss harvesting should be on your year in money checklist. This is something that, you know, robo advisors can do for you and/or if you want more information on tax loss harvesting.

• 26:58Andrew Giancola?

  We actually have an episode on that that I will see if we can link up down in the show notes below so that you can check it out. Number 11 is consider IRA conversions. So for everyone out there who is a high income earner and you want to contribute to a Roth IRA, but you don't meet the income limits. Well, guess what? You, my friends, can do a backdoor Roth IRA and now is a great time to do IRA conversions. So first, the way that this works is you contribute money to a traditional IRA and then you convert that money to a Roth IRA. Now, the easiest place to do this that I have found is Vanguard. Vanguard makes this so incredibly easy because so many of their clients do this that they literally made it just pushing two buttons. And you are converting from your traditional IRA to your Roth IRA.

• 27:40Andrew Giancola?

  And so I think this is something that you need to look at every single year to make sure that you are doing that. And/or if you are, you know, financially independent or you're about to retire early, also making those conversions so that you can have that five year rule coming up is going to be really important. So consider all your Roth IRA conversions. Make sure you are getting enough done. 12 is your flexible spending accounts. Check your remaining balance on your healthcare FSA for 2024 and determine if your employer allows a carryover of unused FSA funds. You have to use those every year. So try to roll over if you can. If not, try to get a little extra use out of those FSA accounts. Now estate planning, this is a great time of year and once a year, I think we should all be looking at our estate plans. And this is the time I do it is during the year in money checklist.

• 28:25Andrew Giancola?

  So I want you to review and update your estate. State planning documents, go through all of them, skim them, make sure everything in there is correct. A lot of things change every single year. This will include your will. If you have a revocable living trust, make sure you're looking at your revocable living trust. Your durable power of attorney is another big one that I want you to look at. Healthcare directives, living wills, all those different things. And ensure that this estate plan reflects your current wishes. Very important that this is happening and that you are reviewing this every single year. What a lot of people do is they let this go way too long. And if you let this go way too long, all of a sudden, a bunch of things have shifted in your life. And you have not updated your will or your estate plan, not a great move. For example, this year I had my daughter.

• 29:07Andrew Giancola?

  I've got to update my estate plan because she was born at the end of October. It is now November when I am recording this. And so I need to update that where she is now in there because then I have her social. I have all of her items. And so it's really important to make sure that I am making that adjustment. 14 is to gather documents organization. So this is a great time before tax season gets all crazy to start gathering your documents and thinking through which documents you need. So important financial documents, including tax returns, investment statements, insurance policies, estate planning documents. All of those need to be stored easily and securely for easy access. You need all of those to make sure that you are on pace when it comes to retirement. Number 15 is we're going to set specific financial goals for 2025.

• 29:51Andrew Giancola?

  Now, when it comes to these specific financial goals, what I want you to do is we're going to have an episode coming out in the next couple of weeks. I want you to make sure you are subscribed to this podcast because we go in very big detail on exactly how to do this. And with your financial goals for 2025, it is really important that you set these and you go through them methodically. And I'm going to show you exactly how to do it with our system. It is very specific on how we do this. And it is a great time now to start thinking through what those goals are. So start making a list now and thinking through what are my financial goals for 2025? What are the big things that I want to accomplish? How can I accomplish those in three years, one year? And we're going to break it all the way down to a monthly and daily action basis. And I'm going to show you exactly how to do that. Number 17 is your emergency fund.

• 30:36Andrew Giancola?

  Last year I did this. I reassessed my emergency fund and I said to myself, I do not like where my emergency fund is. And so what I did was I created a money goal to increase my emergency fund significantly. We had a lot of life changes coming up and a lot of different shifts in life. And so I said to myself, I'm going to attack that emergency fund. And so what I did is I decided this year, I'm going to triple my emergency fund and I did. And so that was a big goal for me in 2024. You need to reassess your emergency fund and see, do you like where you are? Are you comfortable where you are? And continue to save in that emergency fund until you're slightly uncomfortable. Now, the best way to look at your emergency fund is if you don't have one right now, you can follow the 136 method, which is our method on how to build out your emergency fund and have

• 31:19Andrew Giancola?

  it ready to go. It's our most popular YouTube video ever. And if you want to check it out, you can search the 136 method for your emergency fund that we developed. And you'll be able to find that on YouTube and/or if you want to find it on this podcast player, you can as well. So both of those are available. Number 18 is try to talk to your CPA one more time before year end to see if there's anything else you need to be doing. And your CPA can kind of give you some guidance on your own specific tax situation, your in-state tax laws, and some of the things you may want to consider at year end. So what I would do is that when I talk to your CPA, I would say, hey, every year at this time, same exact date, let's have this meeting every year and just get on their calendar every year. That way you can just have that consultation and make sure that you are doing all the things. Now, this might be a $300 consultation, it might be $500. I

• 32:04Andrew Giancola?

  don't know how much your CPA costs. It's worth it if you can even save just a little bit, taking a couple of actions, making sure your specific situation is looking good. 19. Rebalance your portfolio. So making sure that you are rebalancing and looking at your asset allocation is very, very important. If it is your thing, if you're into rebalancing your portfolio, then you need to make sure you're doing it at year end. It is a great time to do it because it's just a reminder while you're checking off all these other things to go in there, rebalance that portfolio, add more allocation to your bonds because most likely your stocks way outperformed your bonds this year. And so you're most likely adding more allocation to your international fund and your bonds because that's what happened.

• 32:45Andrew Giancola?

  Is if you're 73 or older, make sure you are taking your required minimum distributions from retirement accounts to avoid penalties. That's another thing that you need to make sure that you're doing at year end. Very, very important. 21, there's two left. 21 is I want you to start planning for windfalls. So if you expect any year-end bonuses, if you expect tax refunds, or any other financial windfalls, have a plan on how you'll use that money wisely. Every time you know a money windfall is coming, make sure you know where those dollars are going. Planning for those dollars is really important. Now, the 50/50 rule is one thing that we talk about a lot. Save half, save and invest half, and spend half. So if you get a big bonus at the end of the year, maybe you get 10 grand, save and invest five, and you can spend five

• 33:27Andrew Giancola?

  on yourself. That's how we do it. The 50/50 rule is something I really like to implement every time I get a big financial windfall. Number 22 is make sure you check your security plan and plug any holes. So this is the last one, one that we talk about a ton. So one is making sure you freeze your credit. Freezing your credit just got a lot easier. We just had a Money Q and A talking about why it got easier. A listener filled me in on how her system works with freezing your credit, where she can actually do it all in like five minutes or less. Love that system. So if you haven't heard that episode, make sure you listen to that recent Money Q and A. Also, removing your personal information. Now, you guys know that getting your information out of the hands of data brokers is one of the most important things

• 34:10Andrew Giancola?

  that you can do in order to protect yourself online. Data brokers will sell your information to the wrong people. People can Google your name, they can Google your address, they can Google your phone number in quotations and find a ton of information about you out there. So if they stole a portion of your information, they can get the rest pretty easily if you allow data brokers to keep your information up there. And the way to remove your information from those data brokers is using a service like DeleteMe. Now, DeleteMe is the service that I have been using the last couple of years. They are absolutely amazing at what they can do and how they can remove your personal information. They have removed my information from thousands of data brokers out there. So I cannot recommend them enough because they save me dozens and dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of hours every single year from removing your information from these data brokers.

• 34:55Andrew Giancola?

  Brokers. So I really highly recommend Delete Me if you have not already signed up. A lot of you already have because we talk about Delete Me all the time. But if you go to joindelete.me.com/pfp20, you can get 20% off your Delete Me plan. It is one of the best deals going. Otherwise, you'd be spending like 40 hours a year just trying to get your information removed from these data brokers. Delete Me does all the work for you for a really good price. So making sure you look at that is really important. Also, make sure you have a password system in place. OnePassword is an amazing tool. They're a sponsor of this podcast this month because I like them so much. And so making sure that you are utilizing OnePassword is a really good system to have in place. That way, you can have really unique passwords. What OnePassword does is they create like these jumbled up letters and numbers all together with different caps and stuff like that.

• 35:39Andrew Giancola?

  And they remember it all for you. And all you need to do is remember your master vaulted password. And I really like OnePassword for that. And then also, check out our entire cybersecurity checklist. We have a cybersecurity checklist. Make sure you check that out. It is very important to go through that at least once a year to make sure that you are on track in protecting yourself online. As these data breaches keep happening, we had a record number of data breaches this year. And as these keep happening, you have to make sure that you are being proactive and protecting yourself. I know it's not fun. I know it's not the topic you want to always talk about, but it is the topic we need if you want to grow your wealth because your wealth can be poof, gone in one swoop if you don't protect yourself. And that is why we talk about this so much.

• 36:18Andrew Giancola?

  I really, really cannot stress this enough. So that is the Year in Money checklist for 2024. If you guys have any questions, please make sure you reach out to me and join the Master Money newsletter. That is where you can ask those questions as well. I cannot thank you guys enough for investing in yourself because that's exactly what you are doing. Stay tuned. We got some really cool, action-packed episodes coming up. And if you want to be on the waitlist on Money on Autopilot, please send me an email. Let me know and we can get that and make it happen because it is coming in 2025. Cannot wait for that to come out. And don't forget to grab the Year in Money checklist by going to mastermoney.co/resources. Again, thank you guys so much. I truly appreciate each and every single one of you. We will see you on the next episode.