Prioritizing financial goals is one of the hardest things in personal finance. Should you pay off all of your debt before investing? Should you save for a home or a child’s education? How much should you save for emergencies?
The challenge with these questions is twofold. First, they don’t have just one right answer. There are a range of reasonable answers. And what’s reasonable for one person may not be reasonable for another. Second, the “best” answer often depends on knowing the unknowable—the future.
To help tackle this thorny problem, here are four free resources and tools to help you create your sound financial plan.
1. Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps
I’ll start with Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps because of their popularity. It’s a simple approach to prioritizing financial goals that has worked for countless people. Here are the steps:
Step 1: Save $1,000 for your starter emergency fund.
Step 2: Pay off all debt (except the house) using the debt snowball.
Step 3: Save 3–6 months of expenses in a fully funded emergency fund.
Step 4: Invest 15% of your household income in retirement.
Step 5: Save for your children’s college fund.
Step 6: Pay off your home early.
Step 7: Build wealth and give.
These steps work in large part because of their simplicity. They have helped families get out of debt and save for their future. There is a big downside to this approach, however. It leads to suboptimal results.
For example, these steps have you paying off all of your non-mortgage debt, even low interest debt, at the expense of a company 401(k) match. Even high interest debt can be refinanced to a 0% balance transfer card. Prioritizing paying of this debt is stupid on steroids. Still, for some individuals and families, these steps make a reasonable approach to financial planning.
2. Bogleheads Prioritizing Investments Plan
The Bogleheads, named after Vanguard’s founder Jack Bogle, is a group that promotes the benefits of investing in low-cost index funds. The group’s wiki outlines a plan to prioritize investments and pay off debt:
Step 1: Save an Emergency Fund
Step 2: Get the Maximum Match from an Employer Retirement Plan
Step 3: Pay Off High-Interest Debt (Credit Cards)
Step 4: Save in a Health Savings Account (if you have one)
Step 5: Max out an IRS and Employer Retirement Plan
Step 6: Pay Off Medium-Interest Debt (Student Loans, Car Loans)
Step 7: Invest in a Taxable Account
Step 8: Pay Off Low-Interest Debt (Mortgage)
This plan may not appear dramatically different than Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps, but it makes two important improvements.
First, it focuses on getting the benefits of an employer match, if you have one. This change alone is an important improvement. Focusing exclusively on debt repayment at the expense of an employer matching contribution is throwing away free money.
Second, the plan prioritizes debt repayment based on interest rates. The higher the rate, the more priority this plan gives to paying off the debt. While getting out of debt is an important goal, there’s no reason to elevate it above other important goals, particularly without considering the interest rates you are paying.
3. Personal Income Spending Flowchart
The Personal Income Spending Flowchart comes from the excellent subreddit on personal finance. I’ll warn you that the chart can appear overwhelming at first. The steps and options are too many to list here. I’ve included it because it accounts for just about every possible financial decision one could face.
It starts with creating a budget and ends with saving for retirement. It includes a detailed description of each step in the chart. It walks through financial steps in detail, including the order in which one should pay their bills. It accounts for an employer match, health insurance and HSAs, saving for a child’s college education, and even early retirement.
4. ProjectionLab
The final tool on our list is an excellent financial planner. ProjectionLab is the creation of a solo developer named Kyle Nolan. I met him this month a FinCon, a conference for financial influencers (I’m not sure why they let me attend).
ProjectionLab has both a free and paid version. The tool enables you to plan out any financial goal you can imagine. After entering income and expense data, you can set any number of financial goals, such as achieving financial independence, retirement, getting married, paying of debt, and having children. The tool than analyzes the data and maps out when you’ll achieve each goal.
One important benefit of a tool like ProjectionLab is the ability to create and compare multiple plans. For example, in one plan you could forego retirement savings and an employer match in favor of debt. In another plan you could take full advantage of an employer match, and then compare the outcomes of both plans.
You can check out my video review of ProjectionLab here.
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