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Baylake Bank Offers 20 Ways to Celebrate Financial Planning Week, October 5-9

October 5, 2009-- No one can say for sure when the economic upturn will relieve the pressure on the nation's households, but one thing is certain — the landscape for consumer borrowing and spending will be different for years to come. As a result, it’s more important than ever to carefully plan for the financial future.

Baylake Bank and the Financial Planning Association offer 20 simple suggestions to get financial matters in order, just in time to celebrate Financial Planning Week, October 5-9:

1. Balance your checkbook
2. Make a monetary contribution to your favorite charity
3. Start a savings account for a child, vacation or a gift for yourself
4. Help teach your children how to save and spend wisely
5. Get your estate in order: Create or revise your will and other estate-planning documents
6. Call your financial planner and share your appreciation for their service
7. Pay off a credit card
8. Get a head start on college — investigate college planning options
9. Establish an emergency fund
10. Evaluate your employee benefits and begin planning for open enrollment
11. Develop your holiday spending budget
12. Plan for year-end tax strategies
13. Purchase a session with a financial planner for a relative, friend or colleague
14. Give a relative, friend or colleague a subscription to a personal finance magazine
15. Invite a financial planner to speak at your workplace
16. Review your insurance coverage
17. Write down your financial goals and revisit them periodically
18. Start using personal finance software to help you better understand your money
19. Look up three financial terms that have baffled you and resolve to understand them
20. Talk to a relative about their plans for long-term care
It's wise to look at this as an opportunity. Any recent efforts you've made to scrimp, save, and pay off debt should become a permanent part of your financial philosophy. If you still haven't taken those steps, it might be wise to implement the following:

Restart your finances with a thorough financial plan. If you've lost a job or have been struggling to get control of your debt, savings or investments, plan a visit now with a financial planning professional. At the meeting you can also examine spending patterns and the emotional drivers behind many of your financial decisions.

Create a budget. If you've never tracked your spending before, make a commitment to do so for at least two months as you pull together financial statements, income sources and your bills. Start separating all your expenses into both fixed (amounts that don't change) and variable (amounts that may change, such as restaurant meals, gasoline expenditures and entertainment expenses). Take into account any major expenses that are coming up within the year. Total your monthly income and expenses and then start identifying the expenses that you can trim and figure out whether you can direct the money you save to spending or debt. Also, be sure to include planning for vacations and big expenditures, such as cars and retirement.

Live off lists. Yes, everyone makes shopping lists from time to time so they don't forget to bring home milk and bananas. But the advantage of making very detailed shopping lists for everything — preferably on one page — is that it's really a good way to keep impulse spending down. If, for example, you have a week of unexpected expenses (car repair, home repair, unexpected fees for your child at school), you can see what real priority items are and what you might be able to do without.

Set a schedule for checking your credit report. This is not so much a spending issue as a way to monitor the ongoing safety of your accounts and your borrowing status. You have three credit reports to check — TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian — and you have the right to get all three of these for free once a year. The best way to do this is to request each report at staggered points during the year at annualcreditreport.com, which is the only guaranteed free site to order these reports (if any credit report site requests a credit card number before it surrenders a report, chances are good that you'll be paying for that "free" report). Why stagger your reports? Because the same information travels between each agency and if there is an error or security breach, you may catch it faster if you're checking throughout the year rather than at one time only.

Shop with coupons and discount codes. You don't have to rummage through the newspaper to get coupons anymore. If you know particular stores where you'll shop, sign up for their e-mail lists — you'll start receiving coupons and news of specials on a regular basis. Ditto for particular products you buy on a regular basis — go to the manufacturer's website and see if you can sign up for regular discounts online and in the mail.

For more money saving tips and financial planning information, contact a Baylake Bank Personal Banker at the financial center nearest you.


Baylake Bank, Member FDIC/Equal Housing Lender, serves its communities from 28 financial centers in Brown, Door, Green Lake, Kewaunee, Manitowoc, Outagamie, Waupaca, and Waushara counties and from its website at www.baylake.com. For more information call (920) 743-5551 or 1-800-267-3610.