The book cover: Outsmart Your Paycheck, by Charles Wainer

Chapter 17 · Companion tool

The Next Mile

Three things for the last chapter: the number you wrote on the first page, the afternoon of forms that keeps an account out of court, and the ninety-day review.

1. Your quiet-fear number, then and now

You have not saved a starting number on this device yet. That is fine. Write today's number below.

Today's number, in months

2. One afternoon: instructions on every account

Banks. Add a payable-on-death beneficiary to every account.

Brokerages. Add a transfer-on-death beneficiary to every account.

Retirement accounts and life insurance. Confirm who is named, confirm it is still who you would choose today, and add a contingent beneficiary.

Children. Anywhere a minor child is named directly, change it to an adult custodian for that child. Ask the plan or the insurer how to set it up; your state sets the age the child takes control.

Your home. Find out whether your state allows a transfer-on-death deed. If it does, it goes on next month's list.

The will. If you have children at home, or anything that cannot carry a beneficiary, book the appointment.

The rules on deeds, small estates and children’s accounts change at the state line. Check your own state, and use a local attorney for the deed.

3. The ninety-day review

Ninety days from today, sixty minutes, the one-page plan open. Run STEADY for the first time, one question for each letter: Start, what is the one next step? Track, update the four numbers. Earn, is the next raise on the calendar? Automate, did every transfer run, every payday, without you touching it? Defend, did life change, and does your coverage still fit? Yield, did you leave the investments alone? If the last ninety days were comfortable, raise the percentage by one point. After this first one, STEADY takes twenty minutes, every quarter, on the four checkpoint dates in your one-page plan.

Your first review date: ninety days out, or your first Chapter 7 checkpoint if it comes sooner

Charles Wainer standing beside a Cessna — After the first solo. The airplane had not changed. I had

The instructor stepped out, picked up a handheld radio, and walked away. The plane flew the same. The only thing that had changed was who was responsible for it. It is your system now. It will run if you let it.

You are at the end of the system. Now it runs.

The thirty-day plan turns all of this into one small move a day, tracked. When new tools go up on these pages, the updates list is how you hear.

The 30-day plan Get the updates Ask me live, free