The end of the year is an excellent opportunity to review your finances, find areas to improve, and to prepare for the year ahead. We are all in different financial situations. Whether you are focused on paying off debt, growing your investments, or saving for your children’s future, this checklist can help you stay on track and work toward your financial goals.
Here are some financial moves to consider before the start of 2027.
1. Review Your Financial Goals
Your investment strategy should reflect your goals, your time horizon, and your risk tolerance. The end of the year is a good time to determine whether your current plan still makes sense. It is also a great time to set some goals if you don’t have any yet.
What to Review:
- Make sure your investment strategy aligns with your retirement timeline
- Consider if major life changes have impacted your goals or plans
- Avoid making emotional investment decisions solely based on short-term market fluctuations
2. Review Your Budget, Debt, and Emergency Fund
Before focusing on growing investments, it is important to create/review your budget, address debt, and build your emergency fund. This requires discipline, but you will be thanking yourself in the long run.
What to Review:
- Review your cash flow for the year and find areas where you can save
- Develop a plan to pay off your short-term and long-term debt
- Check if your emergency savings is enough for your current situation (3-6 months of expenses)
3. Review Your Retirement Contributions
Dave Ramsey emphasizes the importance of investing consistently for retirement once you have established a solid financial foundation and have addressed your debt. His approach recommends investing 15% of household income toward retirement. Saving for retirement early and consistently will produce better results through compound interest.
What to Review:
- Look over your retirement account contributions
- Check your 2026 contribution limits and determine if you want to contribute more
- Revisit how much you want saved for retirement and determine if your current contributions are going to get you there
4. Required Minimum Distributions (If Applicable)
If you are 73+ and retired, this is an important step for the end of the year. For traditional retirement accounts, it is required to make a RMD each year. RMDs are generally considered taxable income. However, strategies such as qualified charitable distributions (QCD) may help reduce your taxable income while allowing you to support charitable organizations.
What to Review:
- Confirm the amount of the distribution if it will happen before the deadline
- Consider how the RMD will impact your taxable income and if you want to make a qualified charitable distribution (QCD)
5. Prepare for Tax Season
Taking time to organize your finances before the end of the year can help make tax season much less stressful.
What to Review:
- Organize financial statements, charitable donation receipts, and other important documents
- Review how your retirement contributions will impact your taxes
- If you have taxable investments, identify if there are any tax-planning strategies that may be appropriate
- Determine if any changes have happened throughout the year that may affect your taxes
6. Update Your Beneficiaries and Estate Planning Documents
This may be a good time to see if you need to do some estate planning. Estate planning is important for preparing for the future and making sure your assets go where you want them. Dave Ramsey emphasizes the importance of planning ahead. Estate planning is an important aspect of that.
What to Review:
- Check beneficiaries on retirement accounts and life insurance policies
- Review your will, trust, and other estate planning documents
- Make sure your account ownership and beneficiary designations are according to your wishes
7. Set Your Financial Goals for 2027
The best way to start off the new year is with goals and plans to achieve them. Exercising good goal setting and planning habits can help turn intentions into measurable progress and results.
Consider Setting Goals to:
- Retire at a certain age
- Retire with a certain amount of money
- Pay off a specific amount of debt
- Build your emergency fund
- Save for a home, college, or another major expense
Let’s make the most out of the end of the year.
By Jimmy Hancock
Sources:
https://www.ramseysolutions.com/dave-ramsey-7-baby-steps?utm_
https://www.irs.gov/publications/p526?utm_
https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USIRS/bulletins/3fb3d4b?utm_