5 Questions to Help You Get Your Financial Life in Order

“Rather than making resolutions . . . try answering the following five questions today, with a plan to answer them again when 2015 comes to a close.”

In this MarketWatch article, Chuck Jaffe poses the following 5 questions to help people gauge their financial health.

1. What’s your net worth?
2. How many times your current (or last) salary do you have in retirement savings?
3. What’s your debt-payment burden?
4. If you don’t see the next New Year, what would happen to your family financially?
5. When reviewing your finances, what is the single thing that makes you feel the best? The worst?

In addition to the questions, Mr. Jaffe also provides information that can be used to improve a person’s answers  to each question with the goal of helping people manage their personal finances and improve their financial life.

For more information, click here.

Teaching Suggestions

You may want to use the information in this blog post and the original article to

• Discuss each question with your students and explain how their answers can impact their personal financial decision making and financial security?
• Ask students to answer one or more of the questions in this article as an assignment.

Discussion Questions

1. Why is your net worth, salary, savings, and debt-payment burden important?
2. What implications does the question “If you don’t see the next New Year, what would happen to your family financially?” have on your financial planning activities?
3. When you look at your finances, what makes you feel good and what makes you feel bad? Based on your answer, what can you do to change your answers to this question?