Happy New Year!

Just a quick note to wish you all a Happy New Year! No major resolutions for me this year. Just a couple of things that we have to get in order… First off, we still need to put together an estate plan. We’re currently living with wills that I created years ago using an older version of WillMaker. Now that our lives are more complex it’s time to get it done right.

Earlier this year (actually last year, I guess) I read through Michael Palermo’s “Crash Course in Estate Planning” (my review), and I now have a pretty good idea of what we need. If only we could get around to setting up that pesky appointment with the lawyer!

Another thing that I need to do is take a closer look at our asset allocation, particularly with regard to our retirement accounts. The stock portion of our portfolio is pretty much entirely in domestic stocks, and I really need to put some thought into how best to allocate (or reallocate) things going forward. There’s a nice discussion of this going on over at ConsumerismCommentary, where Flexo and others are dissecting his investments. Also, Jim at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity has recently written about reviewing and rebalancing his portfolio. Looks like both of these guys are much more diversified than we are!

Finally, I want to create a user manual of sorts for our family finances. I’m not interested in making sure that my wife manages things in exactly the same anal (and sometimes archaic) fashion that I do. Rather, I just want to be sure she has a general roadmap of our finances so the transition would be as easy as possible. So I’m planning on creating a three-ring binder containing everything she needs — account numbers, insurance policy numbers, contact information, usernames, passwords, etc. I’ll then stash this away in our safe deposit box (along with our Disney World tickets). To help organize my thinking on this, I picked up a copy of “If Something Happens to Me” awhile back. Unfortunately, it’s been sitting on the bookshelf ever since. I’ll report back with my thoughts about this book once I’ve had a chance to spend some time looking it over.

What about you? Any big plans or new resolutions? If you’re looking for ideas, be sure to check out AllThingsFinancial for a nice compilation of financial resolutions for 2006. You should also drop by FreeMoneyFinance, where FMF has been posting his resolutions — looks like he and I are on the same page when it comes to updating our wills.

Update: Scratch rebalancing our portfolio from the list. And the wills.