I’m preparing and writing my goals for the new year. What are you doing in 2026 to improve your personal financial process? I’ve already automated my investing and am trying to see if I can automate my payments and payment requests between friends.

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Nothing special, just continuing to stick to my plan. Curious how you're planning to automate payments between friends. Unless those are planned/recurring, how is that possible?

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Zelle can be scheduled in advance

likehelpful

I focus on a number of areas
- Increasing passive income relative to annual spend to target 2-3x buffer
- Increasing overall net worth
- Setting aside a certain minimum for my children (equivalent of 529) for college
- Building and maintaining my emergency fund
- Monitoring our annual spend and ensure it doesn’t grow too fast relative to passive income

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Dividend investments

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My plan is to make more money

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My ultimate goal! I’m trying to get ideas on how to decrease the small tasks and my mental load to have more capacity.

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I would automate HSA funds, and all other bills. I'm also working towards using cash only for my weekly purchases and putting myself on a strict budget for bigger purchases. Now is not the time to accrue a lot of debt.

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To each their own

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Have a real deep dive into Roth vs Trad as I’m coming up within 5 years of FIRE

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Congratulations on being so close to the finish line!

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I got a much higher paying job, I am 1 month away from being debt-free, and I will start maximizing my retirement savings after paying all of my debt. I’m trying to learn more about mega backdoor Roths.

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Gonna go Dutch on dates

Better utilizing FSA. Beyond that, normal process. I have started a draft budget for the year and use that assess spending / goal progress and key decisions. I won’t finalize the budget until in the year as variable comp amounts may impact non-recurring spend items.

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