It’s time to wrap up 2023! You have accomplished so much this year, and keeping that momentum going in 2024 is essential. Use 30 minutes of reflection time to set yourself on a positive trajectory for the New Year.
In today’s episode, I share my favorite exercises to reflect on the previous year and set myself up for success in the future. I also outline the End of Year Checklist I encourage my clients to complete. Now is the time to set yourself up for where you desire to go with your finances in 2024. So take a minute to appreciate all you have accomplished this year and build a plan to crush your next set of money goals!
Stay tuned to hear insights on these key topics during this episode:
[04:30] How are you separating from the 2023 version of yourself
[05:20] Exercise #1: Writing a letter to your future self
[09:27] Exercise #2: What went well in 2023 and what would you do differently?
[11:34] Exercise #3: Completing an end of the year checklist
[17:53] Reflection exercises for business owners
Tune into this episode of Money Files and learn how I use reflection exercises and an end of year checklist to set myself up for success in the New Year.
Are you ready to start asking for help with your finances?Apply to work with me, and let’s start working towards your financial goals.
IF YOU LOVED THIS CONVERSATION ON END OF THE YEAR FINANCIAL CHECKLIST, CHECK OUT MY EPISODE ON PRIORITIZING YOUR FINANCES SO YOU CAN SAY YES MORE!
Transcript for “End Of The Year Financial Checklist”
Intro: Hi, and welcome to Money Files. I’m Keina Newell from Wealth Over Now. I work every day with professional women and solopreneurs to help them get out of financial overwhelm and shame so they can experience more flexibility and ease with their finances. Are you ready to gain confidence and learn to manage your finances intentionally? Tune in and grab financial tips that will help you master the way you think about and manage your finances.
Keina: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Money Files. This is the last file of the year. It’s crazy to think that 2023 is over and I just kind of wanted to come in and do some end of the year wrap up. I have been listening to some podcasts and just been in this reflective space and thinking about what direction do I want to set for 2023. And so I want to give you definitely some end of the year checklist so you can think about your own money. If you haven’t actually thought about your finances as we go into 2024, just take in some time. If you can take 30 minutes to take the time to do this, then I think that you are going to set yourself up for where you desire to go in 2024.
So a few weeks ago I was listening to a podcast called Separation Season and the podcast host was talking about, that during the holidays, especially like starting from around November until the end of the year, that it’s an opportunity to separate from others and it is a opportunity to separate yourself from other versions of yourself. He gave an example of business owners and some business owners, they may kind of shut down their businesses in December because they don’t think clients want to meet. Or he gave the example of people that kind of take breaks on their fitness and nutrition in December because there are just so many parties and there are so many holidays at this time of the year that they can’t possibly stay on track.
And he was just saying this is the season in which you can surpass other people, but most importantly you can surpass your former identity and your former self. And so as he was talking about that, I was just thinking about this year and one of the habits that I’ve created that I have loved is working out at 5:00 AM in the morning. And I don’t think you could’ve told me a year ago that I would fall in love with working out at five in the morning. I would’ve told you no. That sounds like punishment. I like working out early in the morning or getting up early in the morning, but I don’t want to have to be forced to work out. And even when I decided to do it in February, I wasn’t totally convinced that I was going to make it until December because there are times in the summer where I want to stay up later and I want to do this.
I was thinking of all the reasons in which I would have to quit on my 5:00 AM workouts, but I’ve been doing it successfully for about 9 or 10 months now, and it’s really been one of the most transformational habits that I feel like I’ve adopted. And I have just watched my belief in who I am and how I desire to show up for myself change. And of course there are some mornings where I’m like, you know what? I’m just going to sleep in. But more often than not, I am the person who is working out at five in the morning and I identify as someone who works out. I can take my workout clothes with me on a trip and I’m going to work out. I can take my workout clothes with me right now, or when this podcast comes out, I’m going to be at my parents’ house and there’s a gym down the street from them.
I get my little membership while I’m there and I work out.
I leave before my parents wake up in the morning, I go work out, I come home and then I get to chill with them for the rest of the day. But when I think about what this podcast host was talking about in terms of separation season, it’s like really being in competition with yourself. And this is my question for you. It’s like in a year from now, how are you separated from your 2023 version of yourself. You’ve been with yourself who knows for three decades, four decades, two decades, however long. And there are so many things that we just, we are who we are and there are habits that we have that we haven’t even intentionally adopted, but we have them and they feel like things that we can’t change. And this can be related to your business, it could be in relationships, it could be with fitness, it could be with your money. You don’t just have to think about this just from the financial sense, but I want to give you the opportunity to expand.
One of the exercises that I want you to do, and I will do for myself, and I kind of do this intermittently throughout the year, especially when I’m in a place in which I need to connect to my future self is I write a letter and I write a write a letter to myself from the vantage point of the version of me that has already accomplished something. And so I don’t know what it is that you want to work on. Maybe you want to work on moving your body every single day or maybe you want to work on being more intentional with your savings. And so you’re going to commit to like creating a budget or you’re going to commit to money dates. I don’t know what that is for you, but maybe you want to actually land a new job this year, like you have something that you want to commit to.
So I want you to connect to the version of you who is in December, 2024. You’re a year older, you’re a year wiser, and I want you to write a letter to your current self. And I want you to write down what are the wins that you’re celebrating. Why are you so excited to be showing up in December of 2024 and talking about what you accomplish over the last 12 months? What are those things that you accomplished? Also, in your letter, I want you to think about what did you have to overcome this year. You know yourself better than anybody else and so what are the things that got in the way. When doubt got in the way, how did you talk to yourself? When shame got in the way, how did you talk to yourself? When you failed for the third time on the goal that you set, how did you talk to yourself but still come out a winner in December of 2024?
And what kind words do you have for that person who hasn’t been as consistent as you wanted them to be? Or like maybe you thought that you can come out the gate and be perfect. But what kind words does December, 2024 version have for the person that went through the process this year? And then the last question I want you to answer is like, what’s one habit that you’re so glad you started in 2024? So there are three questions that I want you to think about and I want you to write a letter to the 2024 version of you and I personally like handwriting. I can’t look at it right now, but there used to be a website where you could get an email that would mail you like a letter. So it would email you the letter. So I would encourage you like write the letter down, write this letter to yourself, and then if you have time, type it up and I’m going to look for the feature that does this.
But you can literally enter the letter in and then they’ll send it to you on a particular date. So you could send it to yourself in December of 2024. And that could be the reminder. You might also be like, hey, I’m going to send a letter to myself in June. So maybe every single quarter you want to send yourself a different letter. You could kind of break those up and maybe you’re talking to yourself like, what are the wins you’re celebrating in the first quarter? What are the wins you’re celebrating in the second quarter? And you could break the letter up for yourself, but I really want you to, this is just really based off this concept of the separation season. I want you to go into 2024 really being in competition with yourself.
I love, love, love to be able to witness my own growth. I also know that if I’m not intentional about it, then I won’t be able to shift and I’ll remain the same. I think that’s one of my greatest fears is that I will remain stagnant and just develop this complacency because I haven’t taken the time to ideate and think about what I want next. So take this opportunity and really separate yourself from others, separate yourself from yourself and not in a judgmental space or even position, but really just because you want to show up and be the best version of you. So first year-end activity, write that letter to the future version of yourself and then you can do this before or after. But I would just say like the other end of the year reflection that I love is to really think about what went well this year.
You can do this just from the top of your head, but you can also think about, if you look back at your calendar and you look at January and February and March, like go back through your photos on your phone and see what’s jogged for you in terms of your memory. But what went really well? What memories were you most excited about? What experiences were you most excited about? And then think about this year, what didn’t work for you? You can still break it up in between January and December and thinking about what didn’t work for you. I know the thing that didn’t work for me is hiding from my emotions with something that I would talk about because I’ve seen the impact this year of being able to lean into coaching, especially when it feels really uncomfortable in my business in particular and trying to solve things on my own and not asking for help.
So that’s my thing. I’m guilty of that. And then thinking into, as you think about going into 2024, what’s something that you want to do differently. Try to be as specific as possible. Is there maybe a habit that you want to create there or a new belief or something that you want to remind yourself of or how do you want to show up and how do you want to experience life? And that’s it, just those three things. Just think about that for your year. I am not necessarily a resolution girl, I just really love to be able to sit down and reflect. I think some of my best months that I have or even my best weeks and days is when I take the opportunity to think about what went well, what didn’t work, and what do I want to do differently because It allows me to be in a space where I’m reflective and I can be actively problem solving for the things that matter and the things that are important to me.
And then for the end of the year checklist as I promised, just thinking about some things in terms of things I want you to be able to check off, is at the end of the year, some of you are still in open enrollment season and one of the things I love and in the show notes, we can attach this, I did a podcast last year about looking at your healthcare elections and your dental elections, things in the workplace, but double check and make sure that you are opting into the right healthcare or like medical and dental insurance, especially if you are someone who, you know you have something coming up. Like if you are going to get pregnant this year, you might want to look into getting short-term disability insurance. If you are getting pregnant this year, making sure you know what’s covered with the birth of a child and actually going through, especially you have a couple of days, going through and making sure that you understand and even being able to talk to your healthcare provider about like, okay, will you cover this medication? Will you cover this experience? What happens if I have to have a C-section?
I have no idea why I went straight for kids here, but that’s just something that it made me think about because it is like in my coaching, something that I talk to people about. If you’re on the dental side of things, I know that there have been years where I knew one year I had to get some fillings and so I wanted to make sure that my dental coverage was going to cover that work. So it meant that I opted into a different plan. So just go back and check those things. But also related to that is then we start to look at your HSA contributions and your FSA contributions because if you know, like the year I knew I was getting lasik, I made sure that I fully maxed out my FSA. Also with the FSA they’ve changed things in which you can use your FSA account for, I want to say out of medical, I think it’s like if you have medical necessity; you can use it for like gym memberships. So just type in like FSA expenses, like what’s allowed and just being able to revisit that, like that’s a really smart way for you to use some pretext dollars and just making sure that you’ve thought that out.
The other thing that I want you to do is to mark your calendar for the beginning of the year and I want you to check your first two pay stubs. The reason that I’m telling you to check your first two pay stubs is because tax loss can change, also your benefits are going to kick in. So we want to make sure that we understand how does that impact your net pay? Your net pay is also the money that is the smaller of the two amounts. After they take out taxes, I want you to know how much you make after taxes. Also, like in the beginning of the year, if that’s the time of the year where you get a pay increase, like we want to make sure that you agree with whatever your pay stub says and then by checking your pay stub, the first two, is sometimes there can be fluctuations in between the first and second pay stub. So we want to make sure that they’re consistent and everything has actually kicked in that you elected for at the end of 2023.
Once you actually have those two pay stubs, that’s when we want to go and actually adjust our budget and make sure that if you are getting paid $5,000 a month and now you’re getting paid $5,500 a month, we want to make sure that your budget reflects that so you’re not losing $500 a month. And when I say losing it, meaning that you’re not being intentional about allocating that money and making sure that you’re giving every single dollar a name in your budget. The other things that I want you to do for your end of year checklist, especially if you’re getting a raise, increase your retirement by at least 1%. 1% is the minimum that you should do. But my favorite thing to do if you are getting like a 30, 40, $50,000 pay increase is to make sure that you are maxing out your retirement. Keina, what do you mean max out your retirement? I am not just talking about getting the company match.
Maxing out your retirement means that you are fully contributing $23,000 a year in 2024. So the limits have increased from 2023 to 2024. In 2023, the limit was $22,500 and in 2024 the limits going to be $23,000. These limits change every single year and they have nothing to do with your employer contributions. This is just the amount of money that you are able to put into your retirement vehicle. So check those. I double dog dare you to go up by at least 1%. I promise you won’t feel it and maybe you can go up by 1% every single quarter to just make those incremental shifts and be able to pay your future self. Also, what goes up in addition to like your 401K, your 403 B contribution limits, also the Roth IRA contribution limits, IRA contribution limits and the health savings account contribution limits are also going up. So check into those.
You can just go to the IRS website, they have all the contribution limits listed there and we can also put them in the show notes. The next thing I want you to do is be reflective about the holidays. You have now experienced a new set of holidays, especially if you traveled more this year during the holidays or maybe you didn’t travel as much in the years prior because of covid. Now is a really great time to be like, okay, from November until January 3rd, because we’re making sure we incorporate the New Year. How much money did I spend? And how much money do I want when it comes November or December of 2024 for the holidays? So many people tell me like, I don’t know how much I spend, and they’re just reacting to how much money they spend.
This is a great time to look at how much money you just spent and be able to divide that out by 12. So if you spent $2,400, it can be setting up a holiday fund that you are saving $200 every single month, and then by the end of the year you’ll have $2,400. So set up your holiday fund. You can also start setting up your vacation fund because opportunities are going to be coming for you to go outside in June and July. So when you’re thinking about your budget for 2024, make sure that you’re adjusting those numbers. A couple of things for my business owners, I want you to really go back and reflect on your numbers for 2023. Look at like, how much did I bring into the year? How much did I bring in in 2023? What was kind of my average income? And make your plans off of what you created in 2023.
If nothing is really changing in your business, you can make financial plans based off of what you created in 2023 and use the first six months of the year to make sure like, okay, I agree with the data. This data makes sense. So if you made a $100,000 in 2023, then we can make adjustments in your business or think about your monthly expenses in your business. Think about how much you can pay yourself from an average of the fact that you make $8,333 a month. You might go into 2024 making a little bit more, but I want you to think about last year’s revenue to inform how you’re spending money this year. And the reason why is because we want to create sustainability with the amount of income that you’re making and being able to give yourself an opportunity to build in reserves.
So that was kind of my little hodgepodge of 2023 reflection and end of the year. Thank you so much for engaging with me this year. I love you guys. I don’t know all of you, but I definitely love all of you. And if you have enjoyed listening to my podcast, I would appreciate it if you would leave a review. So if you’re listening on Apple, you can leave a review. Spotify, you can also rate if you shared this episode or any of my other episodes with anyone. Thank you so much. I enjoy being able to hear from those of you who are listening to the podcast. So I will see you guys in 2024. Have a great holiday season and a happy new year.
Outro: Thank you so much for listening to Money Files. If you’re ready to take the next step to reach your financial goals, head to www.wealthovernow.com/appointment and let’s get started.
