The New Year is right around the corner, and that’s a good time to review your finances. The past year has seen Americans of all age and income levels take some serious hits to their household wealth. Here’s a checklist to help you get back on track with your money and decide which areas you need to focus on most in 2009.

1. Review Your Spending Habits. Take a look at where your money went this past year. Gather up checking account statements, receipts, and household bills. Reviewing one to two months of spending should give you a good idea of where your money goes. Look for places to cut your spending to make your dollars stretch farther.

2. Set up a Budget. After listing all of your fixed expenses that won’t budge, such as housing or utilities, set up spending limits for discretionary items like entertainment, dining out, and travel. Use the online budgeting tool at CNN Money to guide you.

3. Tackle Your Debt. One of the most important things you can do to improve your overall financial picture is to pay off as much debt as possible. Put together a workable plan to focus on paying down one debt at a time. Choose the debt with the lowest balance to pay more than the minimum each month. Once that’s paid off, roll over the amount you’ve been paying toward it to another debt.

4. Don’t Give Up on Retirement. Retirement plans in the U.S. lost about $2 trillion over the past 15 months as of October. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work toward a comfortable retirement. If you haven’t already, make an appointment with your financial advisor to do some damage control to your portfolio.

Use the New Year to reprioritize and look for ways to improve your situation. Put together a financial plan that’s right for your situation. Having a roadmap will help you stay on course with tackling your most challenging money issues.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 26th, 2008 at 3:22 pm and is filed under Reverse Mortgage . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.