Welcome to MoneySteps, the online financial wellbeing newsletter. It’s your resource for quick tips, upcoming webinars, success stories and in-depth articles that can help you achieve greater financial wellbeing. Got feedback or story suggestions? Drop us a note at help@financialwellbeing.com.
By Peter Waitzman
You can’t travel back in time. There’s no DeLorean that can do it. But it’s intriguing to think about correcting a mistake or fixing a regret. Fortunately, the government allows you to do a kind of time travel — regarding your taxes, at least.
Think about your previous year. Do you wish that you could’ve put a little more money away in a retirement account? Maybe a health savings account? Perhaps you wanted less taxable income last year. Well, you do have until the tax filing date of Tuesday, April 18, 2017, to make contributions into those accounts for 2016. Yep, that’s right. You can make contributions for 2016 in 2017. It’s the closest thing to time travel I’ve ever seen.
It seems like there’s a “month” for everything, and with the IRS tax filing deadline approaching in mid-April, it’s no wonder that April would be named Financial Literacy Month. So what exactly does financial literacy mean?
Financial literacy is simply the knowledge and understanding of personal finance topics. These topics cover a wide range and include basic investing concepts, budgeting principles and understanding how debt works and can affect you. Improving your financial literacy is a great first step in improving your financial wellbeing.
Take a look at this quote from an email sent by a financial wellbeing participant to their coach. It’s a great example of how powerful coaching can be. This excerpt is shared with the participant’s permission.
MoneySteps Happy User: I can’t believe how much my thinking has changed just since I started talking with you and having you suggest things to me. This is so what I needed in my life right now.
I’m telling all my friends here at work about you and that you are really helping me to be aware of my thinking and my behavior towards money and spending. The thing is, you don’t tell me what to do, you just talk to me and guide me and the realization of how I am behaving just becomes so clear.
Do you have a degree in psychology, because you are just amazing. In a half hour, you are able to help me plan and strategize my spending and saving more than I have ever been able to focus on this before in my life. Well, all this to say I am really impressed with your expertise and I am really excited about working on my budget for my vacation, it has taken a lot of un-realized stress off of me. I see more goals being met and more savings happening for me in the future, and I have you to thank. I really look forward to our next conversation.