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• Tweet ^[1]
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Since Career Week ^[3] was so successful, mostly because of all of your insightful comments, I thought I’d bring you another “week” of focused posts. This time, since we are so near the end of the year, we’ll be focusing on an annual financial review. In reality, the topics in this series apply to any time of the year,not just year’s end, but you have to take a look at least once a year.

I hope the tryptophan ^[4] from Thanksgiving has cleared your system because I need you fully awake this week. In each of the four areas, I’ve picked a few topics designed to “optimize” your personal finances. Some of them are very basic, like getting more interest out of your savings accounts, while others may be a little more complex, like optimizing your asset allocation. Regardless of the topic, I hope you let me know what you think of it. You guys made Career Week a success, I hope we can do the same with the Year End Review.

Banking

• 10 Reasons Why Credit Unions Kick Ass ^[5] – This was an oldie but goodie that I think does a great job kicking off the week.
• How to Minimize Bank Account Fees ^[6] – Banks make a killing off fees and chances are you’ve been dinged sometime in the last year. I’ll share some tips on how to avoid them and an easy way to get them back.
• Highest Savings Account Rates ^[7] – The quickest way to squeeze a couple more nickels out of every day is to put your savings in a place that will give you a higher interest rate.

Credit

• Charge Cards: The Forgotten Option ^[8] – This is less a year end review issue and more of an “ah ha!” point. In the debate between credit and debit, very rarely does a third option, charge cards, come up.
• What is Credit Utilization? ^[9] – A big piece of the credit score puzzle and one of the least understood… until today.
• Review Your Credit Report Annually ^[10] – If you haven’t requested your credit report(s) recently, you should and I’ll explain how easy it is.
• Annual Credit Report Reminder ^[11] – A free service that reminds you when to request your credit reports (every 4 months).

Investing

• BVC #23: Your Mutual Fund May Be Ripping You Off ^[12] [VIDEO] – You can’t control how your investments perform but you can control how much you’re paying for them.
• How to Determine Your Asset Allocation ^[13] – Asset allocation is probably one of the hardest aspects of investing, retirement or otherwise, so I discuss a few approaches that might help alleviate matters.

Taxes

• How to Adjust Your Tax Withholding ^[14] – If you’re one of the many millions that receive a tax rebate in the Spring, consider adjusting your withholding so you don’t give the government an interest free loan each year.
• How to Spend Down Your FSA ^[15] – An FSA is great for getting tax free money for medical expenses, but we always end up with a few bucks left over near the end of the year. Here are a few ideas for how to spend it wisely.
• How to Set FSA Amount ^[16] – Put a little too much money into your FSA last year, in this post I write about how we set our FSA amounts for the year.

I hope you enjoy the week and let me know if there’s a topic you think I should cover!

(Photo: joelanman ^[17])