Personal Finance Challenge Follow Up — Congrats Everyone!

On Monday, I issued a challenge to readers and bloggers to take a single small step to improve their financial situations.

My own small step was calling World Vision and changing my automatic donation information from the bank account I’m about to close. It was quite easy to do (the entire conversation took less than 10 minutes) just something that I was putting off because it was even easier not to do it.

When I called up, I was able to change my name, e-mail address, home address, phone number, and card on the account. I hadn’t actually updated things since I got married, but everything was working fairly well. Mail went to my parents they’d pass it on if it was important.

Another step towards getting my bank account clear of any automatic withdrawals. Now I’m closer to closing it (I’m giving it some probation time just to be sure I’m not forgetting anything).

Here’s a list of the people who’ve taken another small step this week towards making their financial situations better:

• RaxerX is going to make up for 6 months of financial transaction data his computer lost during a crash. It’s going to take a lot of work, but if he can think of it as small steps, he should be able to get through!
• Randall wrote about the first step he took to get his finances in order assessing all his assets, liabilities, monthly bills, etc. It really does help to know what you’re working with.
• Ron from the Wisdom Journal has decided to update his last will and testament. He lists 5 excellent reasons for doing so. Kudos to him for already having one and for keeping it up-to-date!
• Dangling Conversation has committed to organizing all personal debts in one place and will be updating the post with progress on the project and paying them off.
• David of My Two Dollars will be paying off his remaining medical debt. It’s not accruing interest, but he’d really like to get rid of it.
• We Like Money will be transferring over an IRA from Merril Lynch to Vanguard. Like my handling bank accounts, sometimes it’s a matter of the paperwork.
• Gibble has committed to keeping his budget updated daily and consistently. I can identify with the feeling that probably keeps him from updating as often.
• Frugal Vet Tech (student) has come up to a better method ofsticking to her grocery budget. Great idea!
• Prime Time Money will be building a comprehensive dashboard of his finances and will be making the (blank) file available online so that the rest of us can use what he comes up with. Thanks!
• Plonkee is updating the insurance on her house and saved 70 pounds to boot!
• Laura at Green Panda has decided to set up her budget before she gets her last three paychecks, so she uses the money efficiently.
• Yielding Wealth has committed to paying the bills every Wednesday so that nothing gets overlooked or missed. Sounds like a good idea, I’d probably even use some sort of reward system every week after I finished it. Nothing elaborate…perhaps chocolate?
• Think Your Way to Wealth will be working on an aggressive credit card debt elimination plan!
• Might Bargain Hunter will be going paperless. I’m not yet brave enough to do that. I’m semi-paperless, but I also find it comforting to have hard copies.
• Done to Zen will be making savings automatic. Excellent and painless step (hopefully painless).
• Pinyo has committed to sitting down with his estate planning software and getting that all done in the next 2 weeks.
• Pete at Bible Money Matters will start a retirement account. He has a 401(k), but since there’s no company match, a Roth IRA might be a better place to start (followed by the 401(k) if/when he hits the Roth limit).
• Patrick tells the story of when he influenced a friend to take the first step to savings. Not consciously, but his comment made his friend realize how much money he’d saved up in a coin jar.
• Funny About Money explains how she’s been turning her biweekly paychecks into bimonthly paychecks (isn’t it funny how “bi” can mean either “every two x” or “twice every x”? anyway…). This week, she’ll be putting the finishing touches on her setup. Congrats! That’s a great setup.
• Andy at Saving to Invest will be investing more of his savings for retirement by opening a Roth IRA.
• This Writer’s Wallet has been trying to cut down on her food spending, so she’s committed to ordering food at work no more than once a week. Small steps can make a big impact in your budget!
• Art of the Coupon set up a Mint account to keep track of saving and spending.
• Money Energy believes that setting up a Dividend ReInvestment Program (DRIP) is a great single step to keep your money growing.
• Lynnae at Being Frugal will be working on her FLOP — Financial Life all in One Place.
• Living Almost Large will be closing old credit card accounts she doesn’t use any more. The key is to keep the oldest open, just in case.
• That One Caveman is getting life insurance so that the Cavewife and Cavelings will be covered should the unthinkable occur.
• JD at Get Rich Slowly took the step of moving his GRS earnings to a high-interest account since they’d been at approximately 0% interest.

Congrats everyone, you’re doing great!! Thanks for joining me in this.

I’ll keep updating this list as others pick up on the challenge and write about it. Also, if you’ve written about it and your link isn’t yet up, feel free to pop me an e-mail because I might have missed it.

And yes, there’s always still time to do this.

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