Spring Cleaning Your Finances
Every spring, people attack their closets. They pull out everything that’s been sitting in the back corners since October, throw away what doesn’t fit, donate what they don’t need, and organize what’s left. It feels good. It’s a reset.
Your finances deserve the same treatment at least once a year — and spring is as good a time as any to do it.
This isn’t about overhauling everything at once. It’s about spending an hour or two looking at where things actually stand, catching anything that’s drifted, and making a couple of small adjustments that will matter a lot more than they look like they will.
Here’s where to start.
Check Your Beneficiary Designations
This one takes fifteen minutes and could matter more than anything else on this list.
Your beneficiary designations on your pension, deferred comp account, and life insurance policies are legal instructions that override your will entirely. Whoever is listed gets the money — regardless of what you intended, regardless of what your will says, regardless of anything else.
Log into each account and confirm the designation is current. Did you get married since you last checked? Have kids? Go through a divorce? Have a family member pass away who was listed? Any of those events could mean the money goes somewhere you didn’t plan. Update it now, before life gets complicated again.
Look at What You’re Actually Spending
Pull up the last two or three months of bank and credit card statements. Not to track every dollar — just to scan for patterns you might have stopped noticing.
Subscriptions you forgot about. Spending categories that are significantly higher than you’d have guessed. A pattern around certain times of the month or certain days of the week. You’re not building a budget here. You’re just getting honest about where the money is actually going versus where you think it’s going. Those two numbers are often further apart than people expect.
Run the Base Pay Test
Look at your fixed monthly obligations — mortgage or rent, car payment, insurance, loan payments, subscriptions. Add them up. Now compare that number to your base pay, not your typical take-home with overtime.
Can you cover your fixed expenses on base salary alone?
If the answer is yes, you’re building on solid ground. If the answer is no — if you’re depending on overtime, details, or variable income to keep the lights on — that’s the most important thing to address this year. Not because something will definitely go wrong, but because overtime isn’t guaranteed, and a financial life built on income you don’t control is fragile in ways that don’t show up until something changes.
Log Into Your Deferred Comp Account
When’s the last time you actually looked at it? Not just confirmed the contribution is coming out — but looked at what it’s invested in, what the balance is, and whether the contribution rate still makes sense?
If you’ve never changed your investment selection from whatever the default was when you enrolled, there’s a good chance your contributions have been sitting in a low-yield money market or stable value fund. That’s not growing your retirement — it’s holding it in place. Switch to a low-cost index fund if you’re more than ten years from retirement.
And if you haven’t increased your contribution since you first enrolled, bump it by 1%. Just one percent. You won’t feel it in your paycheck, and it will make a meaningful difference over the next five to ten years.
Confirm Your Emergency Fund Is Actually an Emergency Fund
Does it exist? Is it in a separate account where you’re not tempted to spend it? Is the amount still appropriate for where your household is today?
The target for law enforcement households is at least six months of your core fixed expenses — not total spending, just the obligations that have to be paid regardless. If you’re short, point your next overtime check there before anything else.
One More Thing
If you’ve been meaning to get a will done, update your powers of attorney, or put together a household information document so your family knows where everything is — spring is the time to schedule that appointment. Not because anything is going to happen. Because it’s been on the list long enough, and it’s an afternoon’s work that removes a significant amount of risk from your family’s life.
You don’t have to do all of this today. Pick one item from this list, spend thirty minutes on it this week, and do the next one next week. Small, consistent moves are how financial lives actually get better. The cleanup doesn’t have to be dramatic to matter.
If any of these areas are further behind than you’d like — or if you want to work through all of it inside an actual financial plan — reach out at ryan@theshieldfinance.com. That’s exactly what The Shield Finance is here for.
— Ryan
