Annual Financial Checkup: What to Review Every Year

An annual financial checkup is one of the highest-leverage habits you can build. Ryan walks through a practical six-part framework: reviewing your spending, checking cash flow and savings rates, evaluating debt, looking at retirement accounts and investments, doing a basic tax planning pass, and making sure your protection layer, insurance and beneficiaries, is current.

The tone throughout is beginner-friendly. Ryan and Aaron both acknowledge that most people spend more than they realize, and that the goal of the review is not perfection but familiarity. Tackle it one piece at a time. Knowing where your money actually goes is the most valuable outcome of the whole exercise. Talk to your financial advisor or CPA if anything you find raises questions.

Find "Your Fiscal Physical" the book on Amazon

If you have suggestions or feedback, please email us at: Podcast@AlchemyWealth.com

And, as always, Stay the Course!

Transcript

Welcome And Annual Checkup Theme

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Tune in to gain valuable entities and practical therapies as we simplify complex financial concepts into digestible lessons. From budgeting to retirement planning, this podcast is your go-to resource for mastering financial literacy.

Aaron Hoisington 0:32

Welcome everybody. This week's episode of the Fiscal Physical Podcast. My name is Aaron. I am here with uh Ryan Nelson, founder of Alchemy Wealth Management, one of my good pals, and uh my podcast co-host. Uh how you doing today, Ryan? I'm doing well. How are you doing? You know, not too bad, my man. Not too bad. We're uh we're knee deep into 2026 at this point here. So we're uh, you know, how's how's the how's the year treating you so far? It's been really good so far. Um yeah, I can't complain at all. What about yours? That's good, man. I like it. I like to hear that for sure. It's uh it's definitely been uh been a good, you know, it's one of those things you start out the new year and you're like, all right, cool, new year, new me. We hear

Why A Yearly Money Review Matters

Aaron Hoisington 1:10

that like all the time. Like that's like one of the things that uh you know people talk about, but uh um that actually feeds in nicely to our topic today about like, you know, we're gonna talk about our annual financial checkup. What's your review in the new year? So um I'd like to say that was organic, but we did outline that to kind of feed in like that. But uh um today, Ryan, I think we're it's you know, we're gonna talk about uh uh you know just doing an annual checkup. Like, you know, we we talk about like people go into the new year, they have resolutions. That term gets thrown around quite a bit. Um, you know, whether it be for your your your personal life, your fitness, anything like that, and why wouldn't we do money as well? So um I'm hoping you can kind of uh you know talk a little bit about the importance of that, what that might look like for each individual, and kind of maybe give some uh some tips and tricks, I suppose, on how to how people can do kind of a financial annual checkup, if you will.

Ryan Nelson 1:59

Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, it uh you know, if at uh at Alchemy, one of the things we do, we do what we call our uh physical physical, which is the um sort of equivalent of a physical physical is our annual um checkup on um from a financial standpoint. Um so yeah, we we strongly recommend that practice. If you were to be doing it at home, you'd probably be looking at different things that we're looking at with our clients. Sure. Um, but a couple things you could do that would be um kind of low-hanging fruit that would have the biggest impact would be reviewing your spending, um, checking savings, uh evaluating your um like credits, reviewing your investments, of course, maybe doing a little tax planning and and making sure that if anything

Audit Spending: Fixed Vs Variable

Ryan Nelson 2:41

pops up that you're still protected. So um happy to go through kind of each of those in a little bit more detail.

Aaron Hoisington 2:46

Yeah, I think that'd be awesome to kind of just give a and obviously we like to you know stress on this. Obviously, everybody's finances are personal. Talk to your financial advisor, your your CPA, whatever you might be doing with this to kind of get the plan. But I think there's gonna be some good ones in here that are kind of broad, overarching, that can be applied to a lot of different people. So uh yeah, let's let's kick it off, man. I'm ready whenever you are.

Ryan Nelson 3:05

Yeah, so um, so yeah, let's dive into your spending. So one of the most important things you're gonna want to do is just make sure that you're spending that you know that you know where your money is going, right? Which is uh easier said than done sometimes, right? And probably all of us have um, you know, we probably don't want to admit it, but uh we probably all have a couple of expenses that we're not aware of or forgot about, right? Um so one easy way to do this is sort of an audit. So you could pull the last two or three months of um bank statements and credit card statements. Um something that I've an exercise I do that I've mentioned on previous podcasts is I'll pull 12 months of all of my credit card statements, all of my um um uh banking statements and everything. And then you just have I'll consolidate them all into one Excel spreadsheet. And now you have basically an itemized list of every single thing you spent um on in the last 12 months, which sounds daunting and overwhelming, but um if you have uh even a little bit of familiarity with Excel, you can do some filters and sorting and and find some interesting things real quick there. But a much lower ask or less overwhelming would just be go back and look at the last, say, two months of statements and identify, hey, what things are popping up that you didn't realize. Um and then you're gonna want to split that spending into two different categories. Fixed, there's gonna be your fixed expenses and your variable expenses. So your fixed expenses are gonna be things like your mortgage or your rent, your insurance, your utilities, um, any maybe Netflix subscription. It's gonna be those things that are the same month after month after month. And then you can have your have your variable expenses, which are gonna be the things that uh change month to month, right? So things like going out to eat, um, going to the grocery store, any travel, entertainment, those expenses are gonna be vary um month to month. And then you can start to analyze um these expenses and just ask yourself, you know, what kind of surprises you. Um maybe there's a lot more Wendy's transactions, or maybe there's, you know, maybe you realize, wow, I'm spending a lot more money eating out than I think. Um so just kind of analyze and say, hey gosh, what what surprises me here? Maybe the total what I find is for most of our clients here, almost everybody spends more than they think they do. Right. So probably what most people will find surprising is when they actually look at this, they'll say, Oh wow, I didn't think I spent that much every month. Right, yeah. And and and but also looking a little deeper is useful. Um and then another thing you can do if if you're doing kind of what I do, where you're looking at it over multiple months, you can start to see what got more expensive. So you can p compare, you know, January this year's expense to January of last year's expense and see, oh, what where where did maybe some of our subscriptions? Maybe we got an email saying that Apple TV went up, but I didn't really pay attention to it. And now I'm looking at it here and seeing the numbers. And wow, do we need to pay 50% more for that? Or um true. So yeah, so you can start to kind of get a feel, and then you can see you'll likely have some expenses that you just realize, wow, we can cut these out and not even affect our quality of life whatsoever. So that would be low-hanging, low-hanging fruit. Just cut those out. Um, and and yeah, then then you're you're

Cash Flow, Savings, And Automation

Ryan Nelson 6:00

on your way of understanding where your money is actually going. So um maybe actionable would be to just cancel or downgrade one or two um subscriptions. Um next thing you uh next thing you might want to do in this checkup would be to check your cash flow and really your savings. So we looked at where your money's going, right? Your cash flow is gonna be your income minus your expenses. So now so now that you know what your expenses are, you can look at what your income is and look at what your income is minus your expenses and start to figure out are you making more money than you're spending? Right. Yeah, right. Um, which is, you know, it sounds kind of maybe silly as I say it, but like that's a really important detail. Um, and I would tell you a lot of people aren't really probably sure how close those numbers are. So you can start to get a feel for, oh yeah, I have you know, a thousand bucks left over every month, or man, every month is really, really tight. I don't even know if some months I'm positive, some months I'm negative. I don't know. You can start to get a feel for kind of where your cash flow is there. Um, and part of that, I would say then you can start focusing on rearranging some of that cash flow. So determining, hey, is your emergency fund where you want it to be? If not, maybe start directing some of that excess cash um to your emergency fund. Um if you have any big expenses for the year, if I have a wedding coming up, maybe you're directing some of your cash flow to like wedding savings or um tuition or a new car or um uh maybe you're building a deck on your back of your house, right? I don't know, some some big project you might want to be directing some of your cash flow to. Um and I would say we've talked about this on the podcast before too, but paying yourself first. So, you know, it a good a good goal would be as you look at your cash flow to make sure if you have these certain goals, let's say retirement, a wedding, and building a deck on your house. Um, you can set that up and systemize it and automate it so that when your cash flow comes in, you know, a thousand bucks goes to your retirement, a five hundred bucks goes to your wedding account, and two hundred and fifty bucks goes to your deck building account, whatever. Um, and then you know, now as long as you spend what's less left over, you've already prioritized your goals and now you're know you're on track for those goals, and you're not waiting till the end of the month to say, oh man, I don't have enough to put any in my retirement account. Sure. Uh I don't have enough to put in my um my wedding account, so on and so forth. Um, so we talked about um reviewing your expenses and then using those expenses to analyze your cash flow. Next thing you would want to do is look at your debt. And so um, you know, take a look at your your your different debt accounts. So credit cards, car loans, student loans, mortgage. Um just kind of big five I always mention to clients. So it'd be uh mortgage, credit card, student loan, um what did I say? Mortgage, credit card, student loan, car loans, and medical debt. Medical debt, yep. Um there can be others, some personal debts and stuff, but those would be the five most common ones that I see, at least with our clients. So I'd say go ahead, analyze those for yourself and figure out, yeah, what where where are your debts? What are those interest rates? Do you have credit card interest that's carrying over month to month, right? Um if so, you can start looking at those interest rates. And if yeah, if you have a credit card balance carrying over month to month that's um, you know, 20%, maybe we go back to that last

Debt Priorities And Interest Rates

Ryan Nelson 9:20

section where we talked about cash flow and we say, well, maybe our priority should actually be instead of putting 250 bucks towards uh building a deck, maybe we need to focus on getting this credit card paid down, realloc, you know, reconsider our goals. Um, and uh after we get the credit card paid off, then we can start saving up for the the deck again.

Aaron Hoisington 9:38

Yeah, and I I think you mentioned, I mean you mentioned a lot of good good pieces here for sure, but it's it's almost just like getting it down for myself. Like when I get it down on paper and I can see this, I'm like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. I'm paying 28% interest on this credit card or whatever. Potentially, you know, I should maybe get that one paid off first. And that kind of goes into like, you know, what becomes priorities and what's gonna work with your financial advisor to kind of figure like, oh, is it best if I paid this off and then move forward here, or where should I kind of you know do this here? But I think that just seeing it in front of me, I think always just opens up a world of like, oh, that's what like it's because I can look at my finances and stuff and be like, of course I need to pay off these credit cards, but until I actually get them in front of me, I'm like, oh shoot, I forgot I have these other ones right here. Like, and and okay, I can just knock that one out now. That frees up, you know, $50 extra dollars a month that I put into my Roth or whatever it might be along those lines. So I think that's a big piece of this, is just taking the time to do it. And then once you see it, you're like, all right, awesome. Like I can now like see what's what's the priority, and uh, I'd recommend going back, checking out our other episodes on like how to pay off debt and what to pay off debt, and those different methods too that can be kind of helpful in this regard too.

Ryan Nelson 10:46

Yeah, I think that's a good point that's worth emphasizing is that the the practice of doing this is almost the result itself. Sure. Like that's probably the most valuable piece. So if you s if you say, man, Ryan, I don't know anything about Excel, I can't, there's no way I could possibly do that. That's fine. Print out a statement and use pen and paper, right? Like it's the exercise of familiarizing yourself with your finances that is as valuable. Um, I think most of us, myself included, I'm very guilty of this as well. Is we're not as familiar with our personal finances as maybe we should be. And so there's debt that we forgot of, or or we're just kind of ignorant to, you know, like you said, it's like, yeah, I know I have this debt. Yeah, I know I should get it paid off. But until you get it on, you know, on paper, you're looking at it, you realize, wow, that's how much I'm paying in interest every month. Oh wow, that's crazy. Like, okay, this is more serious, right? Yeah. Um, and so just bringing it to the front of mind, like forcing yourself to have to like confront it and deal with it is probably the most valuable piece of this exercise. Um, so yeah, I I would say, yeah, don't get too caught up in yeah, if you whether it's Excel, whether it's pen and paper, sure, whatever tool you want to use. I think you brought up a good point. Like the act of doing it and familiarizing yourself with it is probably the most valuable.

Aaron Hoisington 12:00

And and once you do it one time, too, I'd say like it's a lot easier. Like I feel like the next time you're okay, cool. Now I know kind of what I'm doing. It might take you a couple of times to really get familiar with it,

Retirement Contributions And Rebalancing

Aaron Hoisington 12:10

whether it be Excel, pen and paper, whatever. But the the the second time I find myself doing the third time, I'm like, okay, now I already have like the basis kind of a framework. Exactly, a framework in place. Now I can just build off of that too. So for sure. Find out what kind of works best for you. But I feel like that tends to work well for on my end at least.

Ryan Nelson 12:26

Yeah, yeah, I like it. And then last couple of things I would do if I was going through kind of a in uh sort of a uh ad hoc um do it yourself annual review. I'd take a look at my retirement and my investments. So um see if you're still on track. Are you are you saving as much for your retirement as you want? Are you getting your full company match at work or are you just leaving some of those um returns on the table, right? These are a lot of things where again, it's one of those things. I I think oftentimes our finances like this, it's we all know it's important, but it's not always urgent. So you might in the back of your mind be saying, God, it might get you might have thought a couple of times over the last year, am I getting that full company match at work? I don't I don't know, I can't remember. And then you just move on with life because it's not the most urgent thing. You gotta get home, feed the kids, right? Like there's more things, yeah, get run by the grocery store before you before you go home so you can make dinner. Like there's more things in that day that are urgent. They're not necessarily singularly more important, right, right, but they're more urgent. And so it's easy for this to kind of just get kicked, this can to get kicked down the road, kicked down the road, kicked down the road. And so, yeah, setting aside time to actually look at this and say, am I getting my full company match? Do I understand what my company match is? Right. Do I have any idea if I'm getting my company match? Do I even have a company match? Right. Like just understanding that stuff, it does take a little bit of uh of kind of rolling up the sleeves and doing a little bit of work there. But yeah, it it it can pay off. Um rebalancing, making sure, you know, if if you're if you had say 50% of your investments in stocks and 50% of your investments in bonds to make this example easy, and stocks did really, really well one year. And so now you're you look at your portfolio and you're like, wow, my stocks grew so much. I'm now at 75% stock, 25% bonds. Well, that's a great problem to have. Yeah, but it may not be invested anymore in alignment with your goals. Right. So you may need to rebalance your investments, get them back in line with the amount of risk you were looking to take originally. Um, so just take a look at those those those um retirement goals. Are you on track for them? Take a look at your investments, see if you're still investing appropriately along with your goal. Um, you know, and and sort of maybe an actual takeaway would be hey, um, could you increase your your monthly savings, say, into your 401k at work by 1%? Would you even notice that? If you made a practice of doing that every year for the last 30 years for you know, for a 30-year career, you might not ever notice 1% a year, but at the end of uh at the end of your lifetime or at the end of your career, if you've done that every year for 30 years, your investment account's gonna notice the difference. Um and then the last thing I would say, well, actually, sorry, two more quick ones.

Quick Tax Tune‑Ups And Withholding

Ryan Nelson 14:57

Um, so tax planning, go ahead, see one one quick thing you could do for taxes is just analyze your um your return. So are you getting a ton of money back? That means you probably overpaid the government a little. Maybe your withholdings weren't set up the right way. Did you owe a ton of money? Same thing. Maybe your investment your withholdings weren't set up the right way, right? So that'd be a nice little quick gauge where you could say, hey, if I either owed a ton of money or got a ton of money back, there might have been some disconnect and not I didn't have the right um sort of um uh I didn't have my withholding set up the right way, and you that'd be a quick fix. Um also it kind of ties into retirement accounts, but you could analyze, hey, uh, am I contributing my funds into the type of accounts I want to? Some of this can probably feel a little overwhelming, maybe on the surface, but again, just starting to look at this as half the battle and familiarizing yourself with getting an idea of where your money's going is is probably the most important piece. Um, and then finally I would say, is there anything we can do to protect your plan? So if you review this, you're like, yeah, I'm in a pretty good spot. Well, what things what you know, what wrenches could get thrown into this plan, right? Um, so you know, you don't want to have like a bad day um like wipe out years worth of work, definitely, right? So do you have health insurance? Do you have auto insurance? Do you have your home insurance? Do you have an umbrella policy if appropriate? Um, do you have life like like do you have disability insurance depending on what you know your type of work and stuff? Um are your beneficiaries on your retirement accounts set up the way you want them to be if if appropriate, or have you talked to the appropriate attorneys to determine do you need a will or do you need a trust, right? Um so an easy,

Insurance, Beneficiaries, And Estate Basics

Ryan Nelson 16:35

an easy win there would be, hey, just go look at all your accounts, make sure you have a beneficiary um or a transfer of death um set up for all of them. Um that'd be a quick way just to start analyzing, hey, do you is are there any wrenches that could get thrown in this? And let me analyze what I've done to kind of protect this. So um a quick takeaway, you know, review some of your spending, um, increase your savings if you can, check, make sure you have your beneficiary set up. I mean, even if you were just to do those three things, I think um you'd be in a better spot, right? And so I'd say, yeah, uh make it it's about the journey, not the destination, right? Yeah. So uh go ahead and uh just taking any time to look at any of this is gonna put you in a better spot, I believe.

Aaron Hoisington 17:16

And I think that you you kind of hit on the point of it being you know overwhelming to people to be like, oh my gosh, you know, we just labeled, you know, nailed off or rattled off like six different subjects of six different kind of related but kind of separate things too. And I I know for me, like around this time of year, I I think like if I can tackle one thing a week, like cool. Like if I'm just gonna look at you know, this week I'm gonna be committed to my you know my retirement. Cool. Do I have all my beneficiaries? Do I am I contributing the right amount? Like just break it down into those small, like you know, biteable chunks, if you will. Yeah, yeah. And once you start doing like one or two of those, you get two weeks in, you're like, oh, okay, cool. Like I'm I'm getting more comfortable with this. I'm now learning a lot more. It also will probably contribute if you're like, oh, you know what? I was spending $300 on subscriptions that I never even freaking cruised. Um now I have this $300 extra dollars to maybe now that I've seen I have this extra credit

Make Progress In Weekly Bite‑Size Steps

Aaron Hoisington 18:10

card payment that I could just pay that off real quick here in in two months with this or whatever it might be. So I think just setting it up to be those digestible little pieces and working your way through it versus if you try to tackle it all in like one day, maybe you'll get it done, but you might be overwhelmed and like you might hate it too. And I feel like uh with myself and just with anything in general, if I like kind of what I'm doing and I like seeing the results, I'm much more likely to put a lot more like effort into it and like enjoy it when I'm doing it too, versus like having to be the boogeyman where it's like we got six of these things that I gotta do, but I'm just gonna keep pushing them off because I don't want to do them, kind of thing.

Ryan Nelson 18:44

So 100% agree. He eat the elephant one bite at a time. Exactly. Yeah. Is that the same? Is it is it's it? How do you eat an elephant one bite at a time?

Aaron Hoisington 18:52

I think I've heard that before too. Yeah, like probably not. One of those things that we're just throwing these, but I've heard that one, so I wonder where that a word originates at. We'll look into that later. But um awesome, Ryan. I think this was great just to kind of give everybody a little bit of an idea on you know what to you know, rebalance, what to kind of you know, check out in the new year as far as your financial checkup, if you will. And uh um, but anything uh else here before we go ahead and pause? Nope, let's do it. Awesome. Sounds good, everybody. Uh hang tight.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

And now to put the personal in personal finance.

Personal Segment: Background Noise Habits

Aaron Hoisington 19:27

Welcome back, everybody. This is out of the physical physical podcast. I am still here with Mr. Ryan Nelson. And uh Ryan, I'm uh I got a question here for you. Super curious about I I I feel like I might know the answer to this, but then again, like whenever I feel that, you've almost proven me wrong here, too. Like I'm like, I he'll never get these trivia questions, just rattles them off. Like I'm like, oh wow. Um, but so I'm curious about this one. But uh my question to you is uh what's your favorite kind of background noise? Music, TV, or silence? Do you have a background noise that you you like to? work with or or have going to to you know I guess you know what's your favorite?

Ryan Nelson 20:04

Yeah so I guess it probably depends on the task. Um if I'm I like never listen to music basically ever. So um it's really not that I uh if I'm doing something like unloading the dishwasher I'd like to listen to a podcast. If I'm working it's just silence. I can't I if I'm like actually doing like real work I can't really uh listen to something and do work. Even like a TV or music is distracting to me. So silence if I'm actually working if I'm doing something that's like that takes no mind power like I said walking the dog, unloading the uh dishwasher something like that, doing laundry, then um I like to listen to podcasts. Yeah.

Aaron Hoisington 20:44

What about you? Yeah no I I'm that's exactly what I kind of thought. I was like I don't think like during your actual work you I mean you have a distraction. Like and and I'm this I'm the same exact way like like I I have people I have co-workers and such who like we have they're like oh like share your Spotify playlist that you listen during the day I was like when would I have time to listen to music? Yeah like I'm like I'm working here and like it it always gets like a weird kind of like reaction from people like you don't listen to music at work and I was like no like what it just I that just takes away from like that I'm using some brain power here when I'm not putting it into to to work itself but one thing I've kind of been um like getting into a little bit is like um like white noise okay a little bit but like more of like like a a nice rain shower or something. Like sure like my I got a two year old kid and he sleeps with pretty blaring white noise just in general to like block out stuff. But I've kind of like started like implementing a little bit of like some comforting white noise like when I'm going to sleep. And uh I was always through gray noise is there a word for that yeah there is I can't remember what it's called if it's uh um it might be gray noise but it's a color and then a noise I think too or maybe yellow I don't know but um along those lines but that's really the only thing that I do I I really don't listen to music either. Like I'm like cool I'll throw on a podcast or something like that if I'm driving or something. But for the most part like I'm I'm just like really focused on like doing my work. Like and I feel like it kind of distracts me.

Ryan Nelson 22:10

Yeah I know some people um apparently you're able to just uh like focus better with music. Yeah it's just yeah it's just not me. Not yeah so I'm I'm best off with nothing. But uh yeah something like rain or like the the sound of like thunderstorms or rain or something like that. I could see how something like that it could be um for me because I'm not used to it it probably still would be distracting for me. But I could understand how something like that in the background could um yeah kind of almost help eliminate some other distractions.

Aaron Hoisington 22:38

It is in like you said it is really interesting. Like some people work really well with like you know like that background noise. Like it like just like focuses them even more on their task and it's just it's so interesting kind of how the human brain like works with that about like cool I got like Metallica blaring in my ears but

Closing, Listener Prompt, And Disclaimers

Aaron Hoisington 22:55

I'm like gonna do this really complex like thing. Like uh I'll tell you when it I uh I had a uh back in 2015 I had a back surgery and they're like wheeling me into the the surgery room and I had already gotten the medication I was going to be put under so I was like starting to fade out and I get into the the surgery room and they're like cool in like 10 seconds you'll be asleep and all I hear is like this blaring music that it's like the eye of the tiger like and it's like and it's like dun dun dun dun and I was like oh that was weird like I thought I imagined it. Yeah and I woke up and from the after the surgery and I asked like the nurse I was like hey like I heard this like music they're like oh yeah that's the surgeon's like hype up music and I was like what and they were like yeah right up until like he like starts operating he like listens to this music like in an insanely loud level and I was like and this guy's like 60 who didn't I mean it was just the weirdest thing to me but I was like focuses them in or whatever so it's almost all super interesting I gotta get hyped up before I do this exactly I've never nobody's ever trusted me with that surgery before my hands are so so shaky.

Ryan Nelson 23:59

But uh yeah I'm just an optomologist I don't know why they have me doing that back.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

You've been to med school but uh yeah anyway I I challenge listeners I'm curious what your guys' white noise is or back noise background noise whatever it might be um definitely let us know we'd love to love to hear it and uh um other than that Ryan I think I'm I'm good on my end but uh anything else to uh close us out with as always stay the course thank you for joining us for the Fiscal Physical Podcast until next time happy listening and as always stay the course if you have a question or topic suggestions please email us at podcast at alchemywealth.com if you enjoyed today's discussion subscribe to the podcast to ensure you never miss an episode and consider leaving us a rating and review on your favorite platform this helps other listeners like you find the show for more resources you can visit alchemy wealth management's website at www.alchemywealth.com or find your physical physical the book on Amazon we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that personal finances just that first of all please don't take anything we say as advised the pre-titting content is for informational and entertainment purposes only it's not an offer or a solicitation nor should it be construed or relied upon for tax legal or investment advice it doesn't consider your personal financial situation or objectives and may not be suitable for you.