Create Your 2019 Financial Plan!

Today I’m bringing you a 2019 Financial Plan downloadable, printable PDF. Why? So you can start planning out your finances for 2019 of course!

We’ve gone over a lot of big concepts on this blog like what stocks and bonds are, different types of investment products, how to decide on a retirement budget, etc. But simply understanding what financial concepts are isn’t enough. You also need to have a plan for how to implement them! That’s what we are working on today.

The 2019 Financial Plan PDF

A couple days after I started building this worksheet, someone posted this on Facebook:

My thought is you have freaky good timing, Nate!

My other thought is that I totally agree. Budgeting is obviously important, but it isn’t the only thing you need to do. Budgets usually have a short timeframe – typically a month. You also should be looking longer term. This 2019 Financial Plan worksheet will help you plan out your financial goals, procedures, and action steps for the entire year. In fact, by establishing your annual goals you may find a better plan for your monthly budget.

So click on this image of the 2019 Financial Plan, download it, and print it out. Once you are ready, we’ll walk through the form together so I can suggest some ideas for filling it out.

You can also click this link to download the form.

Now that you have the form in hand, let’s talk about how to fill it out.

2019 Financial Plan Part 1: The Intent

At the top of the 2019 Financial Plan worksheet is a place for you to lay out your overall intent for your money. What do you want to do, or change? Here are some ideas:

• Tackle debt (maybe pay off 25% of your debt this year?)
• Increase savings
• Increase investment contributions
• Learn about tax strategies
• Buy a rental property
• Free up money for investments by lowering taxable income
• Learn to spend less than your income

2019 Financial Plan Part 2: Monthly Action Steps

The monthly action steps, then, are things you can do every month to move towards your overall annual goal. Do you want to learn to live on less? Then your action steps can be focusing on lowering your recurring expenses. Want to become really “money smart?” Maybe you can read a financial book each month to enhance your knowledge.

Here are a bunch of ideas for this section:

• Read some of the great financial books out there (check out your library’s collection and request they add any that aren’t already available!)
• Lower your monthly recurring expenses (insurance and entertainment bills, reduce energy usage, etc)
• Try a new money saving tactic each month (walk to work/stores? Cook more?)
• Complete a No Spend Month
• Create an Emergency Binder
• Make changes to your finances (redo your budget, up your investment contributions)
• Tax stuff! File your taxes, organize your receipts, etc
• Check your credit reports for free on AnnualCreditReport.com (this is the one authorized by US Federal Law!)
• Calculate how much money you need to save for college, a new car, retirement, a down payment on a home, etc

2019 Financial Plan Part 3: 2019 Goals and Procedures

This part is split in 3: savings, debt, and investing. For each one, write in what your goal is. Obviously if you don’t have debt you can skip over that, and if you aren’t ready to invest yet because you are paying off high interest debt then you can leave that blank too.

This is where you should be looking at your budget at the same time. If you decide you want to put an extra $132/month towards paying down the principal on your mortgage, then you should add an extra $132/month to the mortgage payment on your budget! And if you are going to add another $50 to savings every month, where is that money going to come from?

One thing I really wanted to add to the investing portion was a place for you to document your investing guidelines. The last four sentences are all about that. It’s fairly common for people to change up their investing strategy if they see their asset market having huge gains or losses. It’s important to think through your philosophy beforehand and stick with it. If you’ve planned carefully, you shouldn’t need to change. Don’t let your emotions get the best of you – that’s how people end up hurting themselves when markets start to tumble.

2019 Financial Plan Part 4: Important Notes

I wanted to leave some space for you to fill in things you need to record that aren’t covered elsewhere on the form. Maybe you use this space to write out important dates. Maybe you use it to track irregular income. Perhaps it’d be a good spot to write down your charitable contributions so you can track them for tax purposes. Whatever! Use this spot in the way that works for you.

One thing you might want to add – if this applies to you – is tracking extra income. Are you adding on a side hustle? Track your earnings and how you use that money in this section.

2019 Financial Plan Part 5: Controlling Your Spending

This section was added at the request of a friend as a visual reminder about what she called “hot buttons.” Hot buttons are those little things that don’t seem big, but can grow into a large impact if you don’t control them. Things like the Latte Factor.

These are the things that may not seem like they will have an effect over the long term, but if you add them up you can start to see real change. For instance, look at my examples above. One is mine (sushi!) and one is from my brother’s girlfriend.

Right now I’m spending about $15 every week on sushi, before tax. This is already a frugal solution, because I go to Sprouts on $5 Sushi Wednesdays and buy 3 rolls. That’s enough for two meals. But if I switch to getting sushi every other week, that frees up $360/year. And I still get 4 sushi meals every month!

My brother’s girlfriend was buying multiple vinyl albums each month at about $26 each. If she limits herself to one per month (instead of 3) that will save her about $40/month, or $480/year.

$360 + $480 is $840. That’s not enough to fully fund a retirement account, but it’s enough to buy a nice used car every decade! Or enough to pay for Christmas presents every year. Add in a few more, similar small changes and you can start to make enormous progress on your budget.

That’s the 2019 Financial Plan printable? What goals and actions steps do you plan to implement?