You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

Hey everybody, it's Mariel.

There are these things that you're supposed to do every day, week, month, and year to stay healthy.

Like brush your teeth, twice a day, floss once a day, shower every so often.

Go to the doctor, get that colonoscopy, move your body at least 150 minutes per week.

I know. It's a lot, and we're not doing all of these things consistently.

Give yourself a break. Do your best.

The reason I bring this up is that there's a version of this for your financial health.

When it comes to money,

there are certain things you should do to take care of yourself, and they have a cadence,

daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. You could almost plot them out on a calendar.

On this episode of Life Kit, we're going to walk through that calendar with you. We'll talk about

the super practical stuff. You know, here's when to check on your tax withholdings and your investment accounts, but we'll also go beyond the number crunching.

Because something I always tell people is the overwhelmed, overstimulated, exhausted brain

cannot engage in financial planning. That's coming up after the break.

Okay, we're going to start with an exercise. It comes from Brent Weiss,

who co-founded a financial advice company called Fassett and has a whole bunch of letters after his name. Right. A little bit of the alphabet soup. So CFP is certified financial planner. CHFC is charted financial consultant and CLC is actually certified life coach.

He tells his clients to pick a time horizon, say three years, five years, or ten years from now, and then ask themselves.

What has to happen for you to look back and say that I was a wildly successful period

of my life? And I go, but here's a trick. You can't mention money.

Because money really is a means to an end. That end might be security and safety, pleasure,

freedom. It might be a move to another country or the chance to start a

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