September is National Preparedness Month and is a government promoted effort to encourage people to prepare for a variety of emergency situations. This month is the perfect time to evaluate your emergency funds and take proactive steps to mitigate future risks and ensure you have resources on-hand to keep you secure. There are 5 topics for us to keep on our checklist when thinking about overall preparedness:

With the momentum of a brand-new school year, it might feel weird to have a check-in on retirement, however...the concept of fall data collection with our students also applies to us. How will we ever know where we are going and how close we are to the goal if we do not make the time to know exactly where we are at this moment? 

Often times life is so busy, we do not take or more appropriately, make the time to stay on top of our current finances. Truthfully, making time to review our financial life should over time become a regular habit so we know where we are and how we are progressing. As with grading, we won't understand what is going well and what needs improvement if we don't monitor data.