The Ultimate Year End Money Checklist (2025 Edition)

Join the community built to help you master your money, stay accountable, and reach financial freedom. 👉 Join Master Money Academy $19 for the first month. Get The Ultimate Year End Money Checklist here. In this episode of The Personal Finance Podcast, reset your financial life in just 15 minutes with the ultimate year-end money checklist for 2025. Andrew breaks down 10 practical phases to save money instantly with quick wins, automate your money system, review spending and savings, update your net worth, optimize investments and retirement contributions, use tax strategies that reduce your bill, clean up credit and debt, audit insurance protection, update estate planning essentials, and set your money goals for next year. Listen to The Business Show here. Partner Deals Indeed: Start hiring NOW with a SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to upgrade your job post at Indeed.com/personalfinance Get 50% Off Monarch Money, the all-in-one financial tool at www.monarch.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/ DELL: Get a new Dell AI PC starting at $749.99, at Dell.com/ai-pc. Policy Genius: Go to policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quote. Shopify: Shopify makes it so easy to sell. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/pfp Wayfair: Shop outdoor furniture, grills, lawn games, and WAY more for WAY less DeleteMe: Go to https://joindeleteme.com/PFP20/ and Use Promo Code PFP for 20% off! Resources Mentioned Get the Free Automate Your Money Checklist here https://courses.mastermoney.co/automate-your-money-checklist Empower (PC) https://fxo.co/FBdJ Links of the Episodes Mentioned: How to Pay Off $10,000 in Credit Card Debt in Less Than 1 Year https://bit.ly/48rYfUK How to Protect Your Finances Online (Right Now!) https://bit.ly/48C3MsM The 6 Numbers You Must Know to Build Wealth (The Financial Scorecard) https://bit.ly/4inFIgM The Ultimate Guide to Becoming an Employer Match Millionaire (FREE MONEY) https://bit.ly/43SFEzI The 1-3-6 Method For Building & Managing Your Emergency Fund https://bit.ly/3XSWLOb How to Create a Bulletproof Wealth Protection Plan https://bit.ly/4pA4LQ3 Connect With Andrew on Social Media: Instagram TikTok Twitter Master Money Website Master Money Youtube Channel 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?

  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. 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.

• 0:44Andrew Giancola?

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• 1:29Andrew Giancola?

  or piece of content that we record. And that's one of the things that I love about Wayfair. You can shop thousands of products across different styles and budgets, use customer photos and reviews to see how things actually look in real homes, and find something that fits your space. They also have Wayfair Verified Products that are hand-vetted by product specialists using a 10-point quality inspection. And with more than 20 million verified 5-star reviews, you can feel a lot more confident about what you're ordering. I've used Wayfair for this studio and our home, and I absolutely recommend them for your space. So transform your space with pieces that hold up to real life. Join Wayfair Rewards today and get 5% back on every single purchase.

• 2:14Andrew Giancola?

  Head to wayfair.com or shop the Wayfair app for all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com. Wayfair: Every Style, Every Home.

• 2:28Andrew Giancola?

  On this episode of the personal finance podcast, it is a yearly tradition, the 2025 edition of the year in money checklist. You don't want to miss this one.

• 2:45Andrew Giancola?

  Now today, we're going to be diving into the ultimate year end money checklist. And I want you guys to know, there's a lot of year end things that people talk about. You should do this with your finances. You should do that with your finances. Here's seven things you need to do before the end of the year. No, now I'm not doing that. This is the ultimate year end money checklist. I'm going to give you everything you need to be doing in order to make sure you are on track with your financial goals. What a lot of people do is by the end of the year, they start to take their foot off the gas a little bit. But you, as a wealth builder, I don't want you to do that whatsoever. Wealth builders do things differently. And so what we are doing is we are preparing ourselves for 2026 or the next year, and we are doing that in December to make sure that we are on track with our finances. And

• 3:27Andrew Giancola?

  so to do this, we have a checklist set up for you to go through and make sure that you are capitalizing on every single thing you possibly can when it comes to your money. Because wealth builders, we want to make sure that we are doing checks throughout the year. So we don't spend a lot of time on our money month in and month out, but we want to make sure we are doing checks throughout the year in order to ensure we are on top. See, most people think, hey, I'm bad with money. I don't, you know, I'm always missing all these different things that I need to be doing. But instead, what they don't realize is they never stop once a year, just to check their systems. And so the year in money checklist is going to make sure that your system is running on autopilot. But in addition, it's also going to make sure you keep that machine going. This simple system is going to help

• 4:09Andrew Giancola?

  you combat against overspending. It's going to help you combat against missed payments, bad insurance decisions, making sure you avoid tax mistakes, making sure you avoid any other debt mistakes, or broken automations, or even just money stress. And our goal is to help you avoid money stress at all costs. And so this is going to help you go through this, because almost no one does this. At the end of the year, everyone is too ingrained in what is going on with the holiday season, or they're too worried about a bunch of other things. And so almost nobody goes through this. So today, we're going to be diving into the year in money checklist. And if you've heard our episodes in the past, this one is expanded big time. And we are going to do this in 10 different phases today. We're going to be talking through areas of your finances that I want you to go through and check.

• 4:53Andrew Giancola?

  We're going to go through some quick wins that you can do where you can get some quick wins so that you can go into 2026, roll in the snowball downhill. But in addition, we're also going to do some deeper dives. If you really want to make sure that you're optimizing your finances by the end of this year. And also down below, you can download the year in money checklist for 2025. So make sure you check out the link down below. This is going to give you all those different things. And at the end of this episode, I'm going to give you a clean screenshot ready graphic that you can utilize in order to make sure that you have all 10 of those phases. You just screenshot it with your phone so that you can take action today. So download the checklist. It's going to have every detail that you need. And in addition, we'll have the screenshot at the end of this episode. So without further ado, that's something you're into.

• 5:38Andrew Giancola?

  Let's get into it.

• 5:42Andrew Giancola?

  So phase one is built for you to get some momentum. And what I built phase one for is some of the quick wins and money fixes that you can do really, really quickly. And so what you're going to see is some different ways that you can save money instantly. And you can have these quick wins to build up some momentum. So in this section, number one is to cancel all the unnecessary subscriptions. I can tell you right now, every time I do this, I save myself a ton of money because we have good intentions when we subscribe to certain things. But when you cancel some of those unnecessary subscriptions and you set a time every single year to do this, it is so much better. So look for three of those. It'll take you 10 minutes and literally you can save yourself hundreds of dollars per year. Two is to negotiate one bill.

• 6:25Andrew Giancola?

  So go through your bills and look at which ones you can negotiate. Your internet bill, your phone bill, your cable bill, your insurance bill. Just by doing those two things right off the bat, you'd be able to save yourself hundreds and hundreds of dollars throughout the month and maybe even thousands of dollars per year. Number three is to move cash into a high yield savings account if you haven't done so already. And then automate additional $20 to $50 into your Your savings account. Now for some of you out there, I like percentages. So I like to think of this in a way where you can start to make these tweaks in percentages. So if you want a hard number, 20 to 50 bucks is a great start. But what I would say is try to increase the amount that you're contributing to your high yield savings account. Maybe 1%, maybe it's 2%, but start to make those tweaks so that you can increase that savings rate,

• 7:09Andrew Giancola?

  especially if you're trying to build up that emergency fund currently. If that's your big goal, or whatever your other big savings priorities are, make sure you're increasing the amount that you're saving into those accounts. The next thing is increase your 401k contribution by 1%. So go log into your 401k provider right now and increase it by 1%. Imagine you do this every single year over the course of the next 30 years. You would have increased your contributions by 30% just by tweaking it 1% every single year. That's a big, big difference and it's going to make a huge impact on your dollars and how much you are actually saving and building for your future. Next is think about your credit card rewards. A lot of you out there, you need to redeem some of those credit card rewards. So for example, I have the Amex Platinum.

• 7:52Andrew Giancola?

  With the Amex Platinum, there are a lot of different credit card rewards I need to redeem. You get a Lululemon credit of $75 per quarter. You get a $100 Resi credit every single quarter. You get a $50 Saks Fifth Avenue every single quarter. And so because of that, if I'm not going to use it, I will use that and go get a gift card. If I am going to use it, you need to make sure you were taking advantage of some of those, especially when they expire. So for example, another one is something like a Chase Sapphire, for example. There are DoorDash credits in there that you need to be using. There are all kinds of different stuff that you want to look through with your credit card and you need to know what those rewards are and make sure you take advantage of those. Also, check for checking account fees or any other account fees that you have. If your checking account has fees, or if your savings account has fees, you need a new account. So making sure that you look at those is really important.

• 8:36Andrew Giancola?

  Any unused gift cards or credits, make sure you're scanning those. Another one, here's a challenge for you. Sell three unused items in your house. This is going to get you some cash rolling and you can use that cash for the holidays. You can use that cash for something else that you want to do. Maybe you're starting to put it towards your Roth IRA for next year. Maybe you're starting to save in your emergency fund for next year. But sell three unused items and put them in priority. A bunch of stuff that you want to sell on Facebook Marketplace, or maybe it's on eBay. Those are some great places to get the ball rolling so that you can get some cash on hand, especially if you need to pay down debt or whatever else you are working towards. And then number 10 is I want you, if you could take this and just spend 10 minutes doing this, review your last 90 days of spending leaks. Now, we have a prompt that you can use for ChatGPT, and I want you to remove all your personal information

• 9:21Andrew Giancola?

  if you're going to do this for ChatGPT. But I want you to take your last 90 days of spending and check for leaks. Figure out where you're spending most of your money. Try to get a clear depiction of where your dollars are going. And just set a timer, 10 minutes. I'm going to go look through my spending for the last 90 days and see if there are any areas that I want to cut back. This is very easy if you use a tool like Monarch Money or any other budgeting tool out there. This is very easy to go back and look at the last 90 days because you have the data already there. If you use code PFP for Monarch Money, they're a sponsor of this show. I think you get it for like $4 a month if you pay for the yearly subscription. So this is something where really inexpensive, it's going to save you way more than what the monthly subscription is. So again, just raising that 401k contribution by 1% or your brokerage account contribution by 1%

• 10:06Andrew Giancola?

  or whatever other you're saving for is a huge big difference. Do it again for your emergency fund. Just start increasing those contributions every single year. Start making these tweaks now. Now, one other thing that you can do when you do that is even think about the inflation rate. So if you have some more room to give on some of these investment accounts, you can tweak your investment accounts by the rate of inflation for the previous year. And I highly recommend everybody does this is tweaking your investment accounts by the rate of inflation. So if inflation was 3% last year, you increase your contributions to your retirement accounts by 3%. This ensures that you have the same buying power going into these accounts. And it's a really great hack that I love to tell everybody to do by the year end. And it's something you could do in less than 10 minutes. So these are all just 10 minute wins.

• 10:50Andrew Giancola?

  Boom, if you want to knock out a bunch of wins in a row, go through that list and look through that list there. You can go on the checklist. You could start to check all of them off on our PDF checklist here that you can download down below. And I like to just take it and go through there and start to check stuff off and make sure I am knocking this stuff out of the park. So really, really excited for that. Now let's move into phase two.

• 11:13Andrew Giancola?

  All right, phase two is if you didn't hear our last episode, we're talking about automating your finances. This is your automation reset. So, once a year, we want to make sure that you're looking at your automations and we want to make sure that this is all working properly. Everything is going to the right places and we are making the proper tweaks to ensure our money on autopilot system is working well. So, number one is making sure that you confirm all your bills are on auto pay. If you have a couple extra lingering around that you never really put on auto pay, making sure you dive in there and do this. For example, I'm thinking of one right now. I got a new lawn care company and the lawn care company sends me a bill every month and it's kind of an extra step that I have to take in order to make sure I can automate that bill because sometimes you gotta go the extra step when it's a small business. And so, I have to go in there

• 11:57Andrew Giancola?

  and make sure my bank will actually auto pay them, taking a few extra steps so that I don't have to think about it anymore because I keep having to go back in there and pay them manually. And so, this is a great example of something that you should do. If you have those lingering extra bills that you need to put on auto pay, make sure you do it now. Also, automate all your auto transfers based on your income changes. So, if your income changed, your income went up, for example, here's what we talk about, the 50/50 rule, meaning spend 50% of whatever you want and then save 50% towards your financial future. That's how we think about raises. And if you didn't make this tweak yet, now is the time to do it. This is a great time to do it is to update those automatic transfers. Automate your Roth IRA contributions if you have not done

• 12:40Andrew Giancola?

  so and making sure that money is going in every single month. The Roth IRA annual limit has gone up from $2,026 to $7,500. So, making sure you make those tweaks to ensure you max out the Roth is very important. The same thing for your HSA automations, making sure you're making those tweaks based on adjustments. If you have a 529 account for your kids, making sure you adjust that if you want to contribute more to your 529 plan and your sinking funds. So, your travel fund, your holiday fund, your repair fund, all of those are great to start to tweak now. One other thing to note is if you don't have your credit cards on auto pay, I want you to make sure that you go in there, you look at your credit cards, you start to ensure that they are all on auto pay. Card if you can't turn on auto pay if you're worried about not being able to make that payment

• 13:25Andrew Giancola?

  in full then cut that card up and get rid of it otherwise turn on auto pay for every single card that's one of our rules and if it doesn't feel right to turn on auto pay my friend you've got yourself a problem you need to make sure that every single card is on auto pay so that we do not have to ever pay a cent of interest in credit cards that's our number one rule if any wealth builder out there is paying interest outside of you going into credit card debt and then learning about finances then I really really encourage you to make sure that you are turning that on also confirm your flow so making sure your money is flowing through your checking accounts going to the right places mapping this out is important so if you've taken our course automate your money in a weekend you'll see we have a muddy automation flow chart that shows you exactly where your dollars are going visually and what that needs

• 14:07Andrew Giancola?

  to look like and so for a lot of you out there just making sure you update that flow chart is really important and then also turning on alerts for withdrawals or deposits or fraud that's another thing that you want to do with your automations to ensure that you are always alerted when things pop up because we're all busy we're all working hard we got a messy lives going on you got kids you got spouses you got family members all here and so we need to automate our money because automation is going to reduce 80 to 90% of that stress and so making sure you have those automations turned on is really important if you didn't hear our last episode about how to automate your money I highly encourage you to go back and to check that out because we talked through the exact steps that you need to be taking and we have a money automation checklist that you can download we'll link it up in the show notes down below here as

• 14:51Andrew Giancola?

  well in this episode alright phase three is we're gonna do a spending and savings review we're gonna review our spending we're gonna review our savings to make sure we are on track in 2026 so first we want to make sure we know what our savings rate is if you don't calculate your savings rate year in and year out that is one of the six key metrics that I want you to always make sure that you are checking out if you don't know what the other metrics are we will talk about them throughout this episode but we also have an entire episode deep diving into why that is and so we will link that up in the show notes below so that you can check out that episode if you haven't heard it also making sure that you identify lifestyle creep if you have some areas of your life that you feel have just gotten out of hand maybe your lifestyle is Overtime and you don't like the feeling of where it's going, then you need to make sure

• 15:35Andrew Giancola?

  you identify that lifestyle creep and pull back a little bit. And the way that we do this is with spending audits. So we review our last 90 days of spending. That's the quick one that we talk about the top of the show. But this is something where once you start to review your last 90 days, you can see all those lifestyle creep areas. Cut or downgrade three different expenses. So if you have some expenses that are out there that you don't want to be spending money on anymore, make sure you cut them out or downgrade three of them. And then refill your emergency fund if you've used it over the course of the last couple of months. With the 136 method, if you've never heard that episode, that is our flagship episode of how to build up an emergency fund, one of our most popular episodes ever on YouTube. It's got over 200,000 views on YouTube and that episode is really, really powerful for a lot of reasons. One is it's a continuous cycle that if you have to use

• 16:19Andrew Giancola?

  your emergency fund, then you just follow the system back over and over again. And so with this system, really, really important stuff. Also, reviewing your spending plans. So we want you spending 50 to 60% on your essentials or the stuff that comes in every single day, your baseline expenses. We want you to spend 20 to 30% on future you or wealth building activities. And then we want you to spend 20 to 30% on you on doing stuff that you want to do with your money. Your money isn't there to just be hoarded. We want you to be able to utilize your cash, utilize your money. And so that is what this is for. So review where your spending flow is going and how much you're spending on different areas. If your baseline expenses are really high, like 80, 90%, you have two options. You either need to cut back your baseline expenses, but if you can't

• 17:01Andrew Giancola?

  cut back anymore, then you need to earn more. And that's the big difference there for most people. Also, plan for upcoming big expenses. So if you have big expenses in 2026 that you know about, I know one big one for me specifically is during the summer, our family wants to take a big trip. My wife's family is Greek, and so we're going to go over to Greece so my kids can see Greece. And we've been saving for a while for that trip. Want to make sure that we have enough cash on hand. So that's a big upcoming expense that I want to make sure we are planning for. What are your big upcoming expenses? Comment down below on Spotify or YouTube. Would love to hear what those are and what you're saving towards really, really fun stuff to see that. Also, update your sinking funds, making sure that any of your sinking Funds, if you have a car repair fund, if you have a car replacement fund,

• 17:45Andrew Giancola?

  if you have a house down payment fund, update all of those so that you can tweak them and make sure you hit your goals. That is a huge, huge key. Then reviewing your annual expenses or your subscription renewals. If you don't want to renew something, the big annual renewals are the big ones I'm talking about here. Make sure you're reviewing those. In addition to things like insurances, if you have big insurances coming up, if you pay them every six months, you want to make sure you know when those dates are so that you save up enough. Now, a side note, we'll talk about insurance later, but when it comes to like car insurance, if you pay it every six months, you still need to treat that like a bill and save for your car insurance on a monthly basis instead of just waiting for six months down the line to pop up. And then all of a sudden you realize, oh shoot, I didn't save enough cash for this. And then you go paycheck to paycheck,

• 18:28Andrew Giancola?

  or you even go worse into debt to pay that insurance bill. Make sure you just save monthly for that. Treat it like a bill and it makes life easy and effortless. Listen, we're trying to make our money as effortless and as stress free as possible. And so these systems are going to help you do that. Also, check next year's credit cash back categories and see if there are any of those that you need to look at. All right, phase four. Now we're into phase four, which is your net worth reset. I think that at the minimum, you need to track your net worth at least once a year. If you use tools like Monarch Money or Empower, Empower is a great free place to track your net worth if you have not used that before already. And so we'll link that up down below in the show notes if you have not used Empower before, but it is a completely free way to automatically track your net worth

• 19:13Andrew Giancola?

  if you are not using a tool like Monarch Money or something else. And so you can update your net worth as number one, if you're using a spreadsheet, or go and review your net worth if you have not already and compare it to last year. Your net worth is the scorecard. This is the name of the game when it comes to building wealth. We want to make sure that number is going up every year and/or we are getting out of a negative net worth if you are in debt. Then identify what either caused the increase or the decrease. Some years, you could have a decrease if the market is struggling. You could have a decrease if there was some sort of issue in your life and you had to, you know, take on a bunch of debt. And so you're trying to pay off that debt now. That could be a reason why your net worth went down. But what is the increase? Did the market do well? Did you buy some new assets? Did your house appreciate significantly?

• 19:58Andrew Giancola?

  All of those are great reasons. And reviewing your asset growth and your liability changes are two things I want you to do with your net worth. And then checking your progress towards your financial independence number. Every single year, I want you tracking your financial independence number. Meaning, what is the number you need in order to have invested to retire? Why do we track it every year? The reason why we track it every year is because it's going to change. Your lifestyle is going to change. The amount things cost are going to change because of inflation. And so this is a yearly number that needs to be tracked. This is not a every couple of years or every five years or 10 years. No, no, no, no, no. We need to track this every single year to make sure we are on track. If you don't know how to do that, we teach you how to do it in Master Money Academy. So make sure you check that link out below if you want to join.

• 20:43Andrew Giancola?

  Now, update your financial goals based on what you've learned is a big one. So think through all the stuff that you have learned throughout this entire year. And update your financial goals based on that. I would love, love, love to hear about your financial goals and some of the things that you have done. If you have some big financial goals for 2026, leave a comment down below on YouTube or Spotify. And let us know what those big goals are. Proclaim them publicly here. Can't wait to see what your financial goals are.

• 21:10Andrew Giancola?

  Now, phase five is we're going to be talking about investing and retirement here. Now, this is a big area for a lot of folks when it comes to your retirement accounts. There are some things you need to note, some things you need to think about every single year. And this is where you fine tune your investments. But also, if you are retired, or if you're looking at RMDs, if you're looking at some different things with social security, you need to make sure that you're updating some of this stuff as well. In fact, the whole separate checklist just for folks who are retired, because there's a lot of things you need to do in retirement to make sure that you are on track and update. And so we'll talk about some of those here on this checklist as we go through this. So there are some core investing tune ups for everyone that need to happen. Number one is update your 401k contributions for the new IRS limits. The new IRS limits have gone up.

• 21:54Andrew Giancola?

  You can put an additional $1,000 in your 401k for 2026. And so that is something you need to update. Next, update your IRA contributions or your Roth IRA contributions by the new limits 7,500 for 2026. Love when those limits go up. Some people say it happens every year. It doesn't happen every year. It's been happening a lot of years because of inflation, but it doesn't happen every year. And so updating Roths, updating 401ks, that's what we want to be doing here. Also, looking at your HSA contributions, making sure you're putting enough in the HSA based on your financial goals. That's the next thing we want to look through. And then make sure you received your full employer match, my friends. If you're not taking advantage of that free money, that employer match, I need you to get in there and do that now.

• 22:38Andrew Giancola?

  If you've never checked it before, go check right now. And if they've updated it, go check it right now. But making sure that you take advantage of the full employer match is imperative. Every single wealth builder here, I want you getting that employer match is the first thing you need to always be doing. Next, if you are a rebalancing person, if you like to rebalance your portfolio, a lot of you out there do, then go out there. And this is the time to look at your portfolio and rebalance. It's the end of the year. And so this is the best and prime time to do this so that you can rebalance and make sure that you have your portfolio set up properly. Now, talk to your CPA when you do this because you want to make sure you're not triggering a taxable event. But this is the time to review it and look further into it. Also, reviewing your asset allocation, is your asset allocation fitting your risk tolerance? Meaning your mix of stocks and bonds, is it fitting your current risk tolerance?

• 23:24Andrew Giancola?

  And what do we think about this asset allocation? If you want to be 70 30, if you want to be 60 40, if you want to be 100% stocks, doesn't matter what it is. Now is the time to review your asset allocation and make sure you're on track. Also, if you do have an asset allocation set up, check for your portfolio drift and what's going on there. Also, confirm your index funds and target day funds are correct. Some people I've had do this at the end of the year and all of a sudden they realize, wow, I have all these index funds and ETFs that really I don't care about and/or I don't really know much about. I need to make sure I'm getting into the portfolio that I know more about. And then again, at the end of this checklist, update your investing automations as you go through this. Now 50 plus essentials, there's some stuff I want for, for folks who are 50 plus.

• 24:05Andrew Giancola?

  And we might do a full on checklist just for folks who are retirees as well, because I think it's important. But if you're over the age of 50, make Sure you're taking advantage of those catch-up contributions. Also, reviewing your social security claiming plan, 62 versus 67 versus 70. These are some things that I want you to start to review every single year when you get to your 50s. And also review your Medicare or next year's health plan if you're over the age of 65. Now, a big one, if you're over the age of 73, is to calculate your RMDs. And then, consider your QCDs if you're doing RMDs to give to charity. So your charitable donations, that's something you can consider with your RMDs. If you don't want to have some of these taxable events and you're worried about taxes when it comes to taking those required minimum distributions.

• 24:46Andrew Giancola?

  And so, all of these, I know that's a big list, but all of these are things to think through and consider. Now, these won't apply to every single person. So if it doesn't apply to you, you don't have to check off every single box on this list. Some stuff, like thinking about your asset allocation, if you already know what your allocation is, it looks good, you check it throughout the month, that's completely fine. You don't have to do that kind of stuff. Or, if you're not over the age of 50, you don't need to think about catch-up contributions. There's a lot of different things here that we want to make sure that we note. Some of these apply to some individuals and some do not when it comes to this. And so you can skip over some of those if they do not apply to you.

• 25:21Andrew Giancola?

  Now, 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 trying to grow your business.

• 26:04Andrew Giancola?

  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 are a little bigger, a little more independent, and life looks

• 26:49Andrew Giancola?

  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.

• 27:31Andrew Giancola?

  And with PolicyGenius, 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. If you've heard any recent episode of Health Corner, you know that I have spent the last few years trying to optimize my sleep. I've tried sleep trackers, cooling my room, changing my nighttime routine, all the different things, but nothing really matters as much as having the right mattress. And that's one of the reasons I love Lisa. A great mattress is one of those things that you use every single night and you spend

• 28:13Andrew Giancola?

  a third of your life sleeping, and it can make a huge difference on how you feel the next day. Lisa has mattresses designed for different sleep positions and comfort preferences. And their sleep quiz can help you get matched in less than two minutes. Plus, they're designed and they're assembled in the USA, and they come with free shipping, easy returns. And a 120 night free sleep trial. So go to leesa.com for up to 30% off mattress plus and get an extra $50 off with promo code PFP. Exclusive for my listeners. That's L E E S A dot com promo code PFP for 30% off mattresses plus an extra $50 off.

• 28:56Andrew Giancola?

  Let them know we sent you in the survey after checkout. Lesa.com promo code PFP. One thing I've learned from running multiple businesses is there's usually a gap between how you think work is getting done and how it's actually getting done. And we've had times where we thought we knew the bottleneck, only to realize later, the real issue was somewhere completely different. That's exactly what today's sponsor, Scribe, helps solve. Scribe is a workflow AI platform trusted by 94% of the Fortune 500. And Scribe Optimize turns real workflow data into decisions your AI strategy actually needs, automatically capturing how work happens across approved apps, surfacing inefficiency

• 29:38Andrew Giancola?

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• 30:22Andrew Giancola?

  That's S C R I B E dot H O W slash P F P. Phase six, let's talk about some tax optimization. We're not going to do some crazy jargon here. We're going to make sure we simplify this for every single person out there. Okay. Here's some big win items when it comes to tax optimization. Maxing out your HSA is number one. You get the triple tax advantage. And so when it comes to the HSA, money goes in tax-free or you get a deduction. It grows tax-free and you can pull the money out tax-free with the qualified medical expense. So if you need a deduction in this year, try to max out that HSA. Two is contribute to your 529 plan to get the state tax savings. That's a big one for folks who are saving for their kids' college, but make sure you take care of your retirement first before we go into the 529 plan. That's going to be number two.

• 31:06Andrew Giancola?

  Also, consider your Roth conversions. Do we need to do Roth conversions in this given year? Let's talk to our CPA or our advisors to ensure we are on track with our Roth conversions if we've done those calculations. Also, if you are someone out there who likes the tax loss harvest, you had some big gains this year, then maybe you want to consider that, especially if you have a big, big portfolio. Or if you had some big losses this year, then you maybe want to consider that as well. And so you want to think through what you want to do when it comes to tax loss harvesting. Also, business owners, check your business quarterly tax payments. Too many people out there miss this step. And so you got to make sure you are checking those and then adjust your W2 withholdings. That's another big one. And track your charitable donations if you have not already. Or if you need a tax deduction and you are charitably inclined,

• 31:50Andrew Giancola?

  now is the time to do it, my friends. Now is the time to get some more cash towards those causes that you believe in, towards your church and get the money rolling so that you can get that tax deduction. Also, your FSA dollars, your flexible spending account. This is why I don't like the FSA that much. You got to make sure that you are using your FSA dollars before they expire because you can't roll them over year over year. You got to use that money. So look at your flexible spending account and make sure you're using that money if you have not done that already. So that is phase six. It's just some quick tax optimization tips. In 2026, what I want you to do is if you haven't found a CPA yet, get with your CPA and talk about 2026 and your tax plan, what you need to be doing for your specific situation

• 32:33Andrew Giancola?

  so that you can optimize your tax situation in 2026. Now is the time to start having those conversations. Your CPAs get very, very busy when tax time comes around and that's going to start in January. So if you do this early, if you do this before January, you can ensure that you are on track and doing the right things when it comes to tracking that stuff.

• 32:53Andrew Giancola?

  All right, phase seven. Here's what I want to talk about when it comes to phase seven is credit and debt checkups. Because a lot of you in debt, we're going to develop a plan in 2026 to get you out of debt. I'm so excited for 2026. I'm so excited for each and every single one of you as wealth builders. We are gonna build so much wealth as a community here and of itself. And so really excited for you all to be here as we go through this. So checklist number one is let's take a look at our credit score. Every year, I want you to check your credit score at least once a year. Do not do a hard poll or anything like that. Your credit card companies, your banks, pretty much everybody can check your credit score now. Even Monarch Money on their main dashboard, you just link up your name and your information, and Monarch Money will track your credit score for you. So there's a lot of different places that you could do this.

• 33:36Andrew Giancola?

  Most places will do it, and so everywhere will do it without a hard credit poll. So pull that credit report, take a look at it, make sure there's nothing off on it, and review all the different things that are on there. If you have some delinquencies or something that you didn't notice, or if there's something on your report that is wrong, you want to make sure that you note that. Freecreditreport.com is another free place to do it. And so you can go and look for your credit report there. Next is to review all your interest rates. So look at all your debt and your loans. Make sure you don't have any arms or adjustable rates on any of your loans, not just your mortgage, but any of your loans. Make sure you don't have any adjustable rates on there that have gone up or down over the course of the last year. Helocs are notorious for this. They will go up or down, so you want to know what those interest rates are. Jot those down so you know what you're paying every single month.

• 34:20Andrew Giancola?

  Also, check for refinancing opportunities. So if there are opportunities as rates continue to go down, at the time of recording this, the Fed has already lowered rates twice this year. They're talking about doing it a third time. I don't know if they will or not. I don't have a crystal ball. But if they do decide to lower it again, now is the time to start to check for refinancing rates. If you have one of those high mortgages, like a 6, 7, 8, 9% rate mortgage from, you know, 21, 22, 23, then we want to make sure that we are looking into adjusting for some of those. Also, reevaluating your debt payoff strategy, my friends. This is a big one. This is one that really, we need to make sure that we are thinking through our debt payoff. Do we want to make some extra payments towards that debt? And really, we want you to prioritize high Interest debt first. What is high interest debt?

• 35:05Andrew Giancola?

  Any debt above a 6% interest rate, we want you to prioritize. In fact, we put that very high on the Wealth Butters journey in Master Money Academy. Is we want to make sure that that is early on in everyone's journey is to get rid of all those 6% interest debt payments, depending on your financial situation. And so also, let's review our credit card lineup for the year. Are we happy with the credit cards we have? Do we want to add one? Do we want to get rid of one and downgrade it? You can downgrade your cards right now to the free version. So you don't lose your credit history. That's a great thing to do at the end of the year. And then move balances to 0% interest if needed. So if you haven't heard our episode on how to pay off $10,000 worth of credit card debt in 12 months. That episode shows you an exact system on how to utilize a 0% interest credit card

• 35:49Andrew Giancola?

  and move your debt over there and put a plan together. So if you haven't heard that and you're in credit card debt, that's a great one to listen to. If you want to plan to put a plan in place. Next, I want you to create your debt plan for next year. So what is your plan going to be? And then I want you to think about your extra payments. Are you going to make extra payments on that debt? Great, let's automate that. Let's make sure it's automatically going towards that debt. Let's commit to it so we don't have to rely on our willpower and say, ah, this month, I'm not going to make that extra debt payment. No, if you want to do it, let's get it done now. And let's set up those automations so that we can ensure that we clean up that debt. Guess what? When you have your debt paid off, there is nothing better. You have peace of mind and you don't owe anybody anything in this life. There is nothing better than that, my friends. And so that is what happens when we get our debt paid off. Next, we're going to get into phase eight.

• 36:34Andrew Giancola?

  All right, we're in phase eight now. And this is going to be reviewing our insurance on our protection plan. This is really, really important for a lot of people to note. Because I think this is one of the most powerful things that you can do. Insurance is there. It's something we don't love paying, but it is there to protect our wealth. And we need to make sure we are doing that. And so number one is to review your life insurance. So so many of us have people who depend on our income. Maybe it's a spouse, maybe it's your kids, maybe it's a business partner. So you need to make sure that you have a life insurance in place. I use Policy Genius, they're a sponsor of this show. And so they are fantastic for life insurance. But for those out there who don't have life insurance, term life insurance is the way to go. It's really cheap, it's inexpensive. Expensive. You don't need whole life. You don't need all these other ones unless you have very specific situations.

• 37:17Andrew Giancola?

  For most people, term insurance is the best and it's the cheapest by far. So that's a big one. Also, review if you need disability insurance. That's another big one. Umbrella coverage for those of you who have high net worths. Umbrella coverage is a great tool for you to utilize to protect yourself. A lot of you may need that. Also, let's look at our home and auto insurance. Every year I want you to shop your home and auto insurance. We do this in Master Money Academy. It's part of the wealth builder's journey. And when people do this, they are saving hundreds, if not thousands of dollars per year by shopping these two areas. It's very important that you shop your insurance once a year at a minimum. Some people can do it every six months because I want you to put this on your checklist to make sure that you are doing this. Now, one thing about this checklist too, is you can start to expand this out for 2026. If you're like, this is a lot of stuff to do at the end of the year, start making theme months.

• 38:00Andrew Giancola?

  There's 10 different phases here. Start to make each month a different theme. So that you can ensure that you are doing all of this stuff properly. And each month you just have one of these phases on the checklist that you are working through. Also, update your beneficiary. So look through your brokerage accounts. Make sure your beneficiaries are correct. I just did this because we just created a trust for myself and my family. My wife and I went through and looked at our beneficiaries, made the trust as part of our beneficiaries. There's some stuff that we just did there on that. Next is confirm next year's health insurance plan. So if you are still in open enrollment, some people are towards the end of the year, then that is something to review. We just did a newsletter on open enrollment and how to navigate that. So if you haven't checked that out, make sure you're subscribed to the Master Money newsletter.

• 38:41Andrew Giancola?

  We have a lot of information on that. We did a deep dive on open enrollment, how to think about it, how to actually set up your plan and get that in place. Also, freeze your credit. So you need to have a plan in place to ensure that you are on track when it comes to protecting your finances. And in 2026, this is going to be even more important because the amount of identity theft that is happening right now is at record levels. And so freezing your credit is one of the best ways to do that. So you go to the three major credit bureaus. And when you do that, you can go in and freeze your credit. So nobody can open like a credit card in your name or a student loan in your name or a bank account in your name. It reduces fraud significantly. Also, we want to make sure we have our protection plan in place. If you don't have an online protection plan, We have a couple of different episodes talking about exactly how to do that.

• 39:26Andrew Giancola?

  One of my favorite things to do is to make sure you remove your personal information. And that is where Delete Me comes in. So Delete Me is by far one of my favorite providers out there when it comes to protecting your finances online. Why? Because what they do is they go to data brokers out there that have your personal information on the internet. Google your name, Google your address, you're going to see your information out there on a bunch of different websites. You can Google your name in quotations or your address in quotations and it's going to be all over the internet. Delete Me goes to those data brokers and removes your personal information from those data brokers. And it is one of those things where if you try to do this manually, it will take you hours and hours and hours. And what Delete Me does is they ensure A, that it gets removed from those websites.

• 40:08Andrew Giancola?

  B, they will continuously remove it from those websites throughout the year. So it is by far one of my favorite services to use to protect your finances online. So if you go to joindelete.me/pfp20, you can save 20% off of Delete Me there. So that's joindelete.me/pfp20, PFP, Personal Finance Podcast 20, and that will save you 20% off there. So make sure you check that out as well. But then check out our episode talking about how to develop a financial protection plan. It is really important to have that in place to protect your finances. Fraud is at an all time high. People are losing a lot more money than they used to. And it's not just folks who are being targeted that are elderly. It's all different types of people are getting money stolen from them. So I really don't want that to happen to you.

• 40:52Andrew Giancola?

  And if you have it locked up, if you have protection in place, it is much harder for scammers to get your information.

• 40:59Andrew Giancola?

  All right, so phase nine is I want you to think about this and think about ways to either do this now or update it over the course of the next year is to look at and update your will. My attorney always says you gotta look every three years to make sure nothing major has changed. I like to do this once a year and just think through, has anything changed on my will? Did we do anything last year? If we did not, what has changed over the course of the last year? I've had some big changes in my life just over this course of this last year. It feels like stuff changes every year, so I need to review this on a yearly basis. That's a really big one. Update your power of attorney in your will if you need to, or update your healthcare directive when it comes to your will. Your trust and then think through your essential documents. Now, another thing that you should put into place or plan on doing is creating a dead binder. A dead binder is where your spouse, if you're the primary financial person,

• 41:43Andrew Giancola?

  which if you're listening to this podcast, you most likely are. If you're the primary financial person, it's where can everybody else find all your passwords, all your information, your bank accounts. That kind of stuff is really helpful so that they don't have to try to figure it all out and lose out on money or accounts because they can't find the passwords. And then review your guardianship for your children and then update digital access to different assets and make sure that you note what's going on there. It's not fun to do this stuff, but it is necessary.

• 42:10Andrew Giancola?

  Now, phase 10, this is going to be the part where I want you to set up your goals. And we're going to talk about goals a lot in the next upcoming weeks because you know, goal setting is huge here at the personal finance podcast and master money. It's a big thing that we talk about here. It's a big core thing that a lot of wealth builders need to do is set up those goals and have a plan in place to achieve those goals. If you want to get ahead on that, we are going to be talking about it a lot in Master Money Academy in the next couple of weeks. So make sure you check that out and join if you have not already. You can join your first month for 19 bucks right now in Master Money Academy. So make sure you check that out. We have a link down below for you to do that. All right, next, we are going to talk through this and go through everything you need to consider when it comes to next year money and life planning. So one, I want you to set your savings goals.

• 42:54Andrew Giancola?

  What are your goals for 2026 and what are you going to be doing? I want you to set your investing goal. Your investing goal is anything going to retirement accounts, IRAs, HSAs, those types of things, brokerage accounts. Your savings goals is things like your emergency funds. And if you have some fun savings goals, also some of those, if you want to put those into place. Next is your income and career goals. Do you want to make more money in 2026? Well, if so, what are you going to do to get there? What are the steps you're going to take to get there? Let's set those up and then choose a couple of skills to work on. What are some lifelong skills that you can work on throughout the year? I like to set one up every quarter and think through, what are the skills that I can acquire in order to achieve some financial greatness? Maybe some of you, for example, you want to learn more about AI. Maybe some of you out there want to learn about sales. Maybe some of you want to learn about negotiation.

• 43:38Andrew Giancola?

  Maybe some of you want to learn about business strategy or setting up systems and operations. Maybe some Some of you want to learn about something else. I don't care what it is, but set up goals for your career and plan for some of this stuff. Then let's review our financial vision. What is our vision for our finances? Let's think about the long term. What do we want to do? What is our North Star? And let's start executing that, guys. This is the time to do it. Right now is start thinking about this stuff. Most people wait till halfway through January. You could be a month and a half ahead of them by just starting right now. And then schedule next year's review. So next year's review is going to be when you're going to review all this stuff. But also, I want you to schedule a time for your goal planning with your spouse for this year. So my wife and I like to do this. We like to go to a restaurant every year

• 44:22Andrew Giancola?

  and start to plan out our financial goals for the next year. And we took an entire day last year and started to plan it out. We got out a big whiteboard. It's here in my studio. Looking at it right over here. Got this giant whiteboard, wrote out all these massive goals that we have. Some of them will change throughout the year and that's okay. But you want to make sure that you are planning this out and working through some of this stuff. And then reviews, this year's wins and losses. That's going to be a huge, huge, huge one. So that is the ultimate year in money checklist. If you need help implementing some of this stuff in the year in money checklist, you're like, man, that is so much stuff. I feel lost. That's what Master Money Academy is here for. It is there to help you through the process of building wealth. And that is why there are so many components to building wealth. And we make it so easy for you. Then when you get stuck or you have a question,

• 45:08Andrew Giancola?

  I am doing group coaching calls with people in the academy all the time. And so we want, we want to invite you to join Master Money Academy. And I want to make it accessible to everyone. So for your first month, you can check it out. $19 for your first month, less than the price of going to Chipotle nowadays. And so you can go and check out your first month in Master Money Academy. And you get all the courses, you get coaching and Q and As. You get to see monthly hot seats where we review people's finances. And we go through and tell them what they need to be doing. You get templates and checklists. You get community accountability. We have Master Money, Masterminds in there where we are having people get together based on common goals and they are working towards building wealth together with people in the community. There's so much there that I know most of you would absolutely love. And for 19 bucks, honestly, that is

• 45:52Andrew Giancola?

  A steal for your first month. So definitely, definitely, definitely check out Master Money Academy and can't wait to see you in there. Now, listen, thank you so much for every single one of you for being here on this episode. I truly appreciate it. Our goal is to bring you as much value as we possibly can. And at the end of this episode, I'm going to give you a screenshot for all 10 of those phases that you can screenshot that you can check that out. Thank you again for being here. I truly appreciate you and we will see you on the next episode.

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