Ramit Sethi

Get your credit score and credit report (one hour).

up your credit card (two hours). I

Make sure you’re handling your credit cards effectively (three hours)

you have debt, start paying it off (one week to plan, then start paying more).

Annual Financial Checklist

It’s important to maintain your automated financial system. Every year, I spend a few hours re-reviewing my system and making any changes necessary. For example, have I added subscriptions that I don’t need anymore? Should I adjust my Conscious Spending Plan to account for new short-term goals? Set aside some time every year—I recommend December so you can start the next year off right—to go through each of the steps below.

prepare for this meeting. You’ll each want to bring the following:

■ A list of your accounts and the amount in each

■ A list of debts and what the interest rates are

■ Monthly expenses (see table for details on how to determine this)

■ Your total income

■ Any money that is owed to you

■ Your short-term and long-term financial goals

Work and Money

Fundamentally, there are two ways to get more money. You can earn more or you can spend less. Cutting costs is great, but I personally find increasing earnings to be a lot more fun. Because most of our income comes from work, it’s an excellent place to optimize and earn more. In fact, negotiating your salary at a new job is the fastest legal way to make money. Your starting salary is even more important than you think, because it sets the bar for future raises and, in all likelihood, your starting salary at future jobs. A $1,000 or $2,000 salary increase, in other words, can equal many times that over your career. Now let me show you how to get thousands by negotiating for a better salary.

basics of negotiating are very simple:

1. Remember that nobody cares about you. Most new employees come to the table talking about how much they want to make. To be totally honest, as a hiring manager, I don’t really care what you want to make. Personally, I’d like to be fed octopus ceviche on command. So what? When you’re negotiating, remember this: When it comes to you, your manager cares about two things—how you’re going to make him or her look better, and how you’re going to help the company do well.

Negotiating tactic: Always frame your negotiation requests in a way that shows how the company will benefit. Don’t focus on the amount you’ll cost the company. Instead, illustrate how much value you can provide the company.

Have another job offer—and use it. This is the single most effective thing

Come prepared (99 percent of people don’t). Don’t just pick a salary out of thin air. First, visit salary.com and payscale.com to get a median amount for the position. Then, if you can, talk to people currently at the company (if you know someone who has recently left, even better—they’ll be more willing to give you the real information) and ask what the salary range really is for the job. Finally—and this is important—bring a plan of how you’ll hit your goals to the negotiating session.