Keep putting these off at your peril

My car, my cell phone, and my TV are all smarter than I am now. They all remind me when something needs to be attended to – service due, update operating system, too many recordings scheduled – and if I ignore those warnings I know sooner or later I’ll pay for procrastinating.

Your finances don’t come with automated alerts, however, so you have to depend on friends like me to keep you on track. Here are some financial issues you might want to address while there’s still time:

• Living without a safety net. A large number of American families live paycheck-to-paycheck, unable to come up with the money to handle even the smallest financial emergency. Without an emergency reserve – even a few hundred dollars you can afford to live without – the wolf will always be at the door.

• Saving for retirement. Millennials as a generation are great savers but slow when it comes to investing. Saving money is an essential habit, but if you’re earning less than the inflation rate, you will continue to fall behind. Once your emergency fund is in place, enroll in your employer’s retirement plan, especially if the company will match any portion of your contributions.

• Contributing to a Roth IRA. If an employer plan is not an option (and even if it is), save for retirement through a Roth IRA while you can. At some point your income might disqualify you from making Roth contributions, and you’ll regret all the years of potentially tax-free compounding you could have enjoyed.

• Rebalancing. With equities far outpacing fixed-income returns lately, your portfolio has likely drifted from its original asset allocation. Rebalancing your investments periodically is as close to buying low and selling high as you’ll likely ever see. Once a year is adequate for most investors.

• Ignoring inflation risks. If your long-term plan assumes that inflation will remain at today’s low levels, you could be in for a rude shock one day – especially if your portfolio is mostly fixed-income. Once you start eating into principal, you might never be able to stop until all the money is gone.

• Updating beneficiaries. A relative of mine put off changing the beneficiary on his government pension when he divorced and remarried many years ago. When he died unexpectedly, his ex-wife received income for the rest of her life. His widow inherited the mortgage. Enough said.

• Estate planning. While you’re at it, sit down with a qualified attorney and spell out in writing exactly how you want your assets distributed when you die. That plan should also address what would happen if you become incapacitated. Once those things happen, it’s too late to plan.

• Long-term care. A private room in a nursing home currently costs more than $100,000 a year on average. You might be able to pay those bills out-of-pocket if you have enough money. Or you might be able to afford long-term care insurance to transfer the risk. Or you might be forced to rely on government assistance. But regardless of your own situation, wouldn’t it be smart to start figuring that out?

I doubt any of the above will make it on your things-to-do-for-fun list next weekend. Then again, changing your oil and replacing your home’s AC filter probably won’t either. If they were enjoyable, we probably wouldn’t keep putting them off. My advice is to see which apply to you, rank them by importance, and start picking them off one project at a time.

And any help with programming my DVR would be greatly appreciated.

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