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Budgeting, setting up the right accounts, filing your taxes, planning ahead, and handling money as a couple. Organize your money and decide where it goes.
Open Smart Advantage Checking at BMO if you want a branch nearby and no monthly fee or minimum balance. Before you keep savings there, compare an online bank, since BMO’s basic savings account pays 0.01% annual percentage yield (APY) and its money market pays its top rates only from $250,000.
In a major life transition, the costliest money mistakes are usually small steps you skip or rush, not the big decisions. Within 30 days of a marriage, divorce, new baby, or job change, update your beneficiaries, fix your health coverage, and move old retirement money directly into a new account instead of cashing it out.
When a financial windfall lands, park it in an insured savings account and wait at least three months before you buy anything big, quit your job, invest it, or lend it out. Use the pause to learn your tax bill and write a plan, so emotion and other people’s requests don’t spend the money for you.
A pre-authorization hold sets aside part of your available credit or checking balance until the merchant’s final charge replaces it. If a hold is blocking money or credit you need, ask the merchant to release it and send you written confirmation, then share that confirmation with your bank so it can lift the hold early.
Rich celebrities go broke when the houses, cars, and staff they took on in their best years keep costing money after the big paydays stop. If your income swings, set your budget by a lean year’s pay instead, and send anything above it to savings or one-time spending.
You can toss most tax paperwork once a return is three years old, because the IRS’s usual window to question it has closed. Some states take longer than the IRS, so check yours. Keep the records that set the tax on what you still own, like a home or investments, until three years after you report the sale.
A big tax refund is your own pay, withheld from every paycheck and handed back months later without interest, unless it comes from a credit like the Earned Income Tax Credit. Run the IRS Tax Withholding Estimator, give your employer the new W-4 it produces, and have the extra take-home pay moved into savings automatically on payday.
A fiduciary has to put your interests first but can still earn commissions on what they recommend. A fee-only advisor is paid only by you. Before you hire an advisor, ask whether they’re fee-only and a fiduciary at all times, and get both answers in writing.
When your income swings month to month, a budget built on your average runs short every time a month comes in below it. Pull a year of deposits, find your worst month, and build a fixed budget that fits inside it, so good months refill your reserve and bad months stop landing on a credit card.
If you’re bringing debt, a home, a business, retirement savings, or kids from a past relationship into a marriage, start the prenup conversation months before the wedding. Writing one begins with each of you disclosing everything you own and owe. Even if you never sign, you’ll both know exactly what the other brings to the marriage.
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