Money Action Tips to Make Your Money Work for You

With the 2015 year ending, many people are looking at what they can change for the New Year in order to see more money action in their portfolios. After all, most everyone has some sort of financial goal that they make for the New Year, in hopes of changing the way their financial lives are going. Whether you want to increase your savings or ensure that your retirement is growing, there are numerous money action decisions that you can make that are going to make a difference in the future. The key is to figure out what your next move is, and how this is going to help you, then stick to it for the upcoming year.

[Read: 6 Ways You Can Cut Your Spending This Year]

10 Tips to help you with your Money in the New Year

There are several tips out there that are designed to be used as a starting point for the financial decisions that are going to affect the rest of your life. The following money action tips are meant to help you get started:

1. Before the start of 2016, be sure that your 401k plan is maxed out. Each year, a 401k can only have $18,000 placed into this. If you are not near the goal yet, can you add in more during this last month to ensure that you are maximizing this benefit? If not, then consider how much you can up each month during 2016 so that you are maximizing out 2016.
2. Consider a conversion from a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA. This is going to be great to decide before the tax season of 2016 starts up, that way if you did earn a smaller income this year, you are not paying more taxes on this IRA.
3. With the upcoming year almost here, how are you on insurance? Analyzing not only your home and health insurance, but also your auto insurance. Look at what changes you seen during 2015 and how to compensate for these changes during 2016. This is something that everyone should be doing in order to ensure that they are making good money action decisions.
4. Look at your investments and what done well and what you may have made a bad decision on. You will find that this is time to see if you should sell stock, invest more into a specific stock on the market or the like.
5. Look at your past credit card and banking statements. You want to average out what you spent all year and on what. This can help you to better budget for 2016, and this can put you way ahead on other goals such as saving more or investing more.
6. For those with kids, now is the time to make the decision to open up a new college savings account. It is never too early to start saving. Many parents utilize a 529 college savings account for their children in which they can then use for college expenses later.
7. At the end of the year, it is time to look at the beneficiaries you have listed for insurance policies and the like. This is going to ensure that if something were to happen, that those who you love have peace of mind, and there will be no issues with money for them later.
8. Look at your tax credits, such as the energy efficient home improvement tax. All of this information has to be dated on or before December 31, 2015 to make these applicable for the tax season that you file in 2016. Money action professionals are going to tell anyone that now is the not the time to wait for tax preparation.
9. Make any and all donations that you want to make now, so that you can still count this for the 2015 tax season. This is especially important for those who are looking to claim this on their income tax.
10. Check your health accounts. Many people are given flexible spending accounts, so you want to make sure that these are in good shape. You will also want to make sure that you have applied whatever accounts you need to apply to this sum of money to use for the 2015 year.

It can feel as though these money action tips are going to be rather time consuming. However, that is why most people do these things throughout the year so that it is not such of a shock.

[Read: Learn to Budget with a Variable Income]

Tips to Help throughout the Year

Once you decide that you need to do more throughout 2016 for your money action plan. There are several tips that you can integrate so that this is not as much of a shock at the end of the year:

• Make it a point to check your budget monthly or weekly, whatever works best for you
• Check your investments periodically throughout the year
• Make adjustments to whatever throughout the year to ensure that you meet your end goals