Most household financial decisions happen one at a time, in the moment they arise. A yearly review is the opposite: everything on the table at once, on a date chosen in advance, with an agenda. What follows is a working agenda you can use as written.
Before the meeting
- The most recent statement for every account — bank, investment, retirement, and any account nobody has opened mail from in a while.
- The declarations or schedule pages of each insurance policy.
- Your estate document inventory — what exists, where it is held, when it was last reviewed.
- A list of recurring commitments: subscriptions, memberships, standing payments.
- Last year's review notes, if this is not the first.
The agenda
What changed this year
Jobs, health, family, homes, businesses. Every later agenda item is checked against this list, because documents drift out of date at exactly these events.
The document check
Beneficiary designations, account titling, and the estate document inventory. Read the designations as they are on file, not as anyone remembers them. Take findings to your attorney.
The fee check
Pull the fee disclosures and statements for investment accounts and any annuity or insurance contracts, and confirm someone can state what each account costs per year. Unknowns go on the open-items list.
The coverage check
Read each policy's schedule page against the life it is supposed to protect — amounts, named insureds, and beneficiaries that may predate this year's changes.
Savings and goals
What was actually saved this year — from the statements, not from memory — and whether that amount was a decision or a leftover. Set the coming year's figure deliberately.
The access conversation
Who knows where the documents are? Who has the contact list — advisor, attorney, accountant? Could the right person reach the accounts if they suddenly had to? This item costs nothing and is the one families most often thank themselves for.
Who should be in the room
At minimum, the people who share the finances. Many families widen the circle deliberately: adult children who would step in during an emergency, or a parent whose affairs the household now helps manage. The review is also the natural moment to decide what your advisor, attorney, or accountant should see afterward — the open-items list usually sorts itself into questions for each. What matters is that the meeting is scheduled, not improvised; reviews that wait for a quiet week wait forever.
After the meeting
Record the findings, assign each open item to a person, and date the next review before everyone leaves the table. Keep the notes with the estate document inventory, so next year's meeting starts from evidence instead of recollection. An agenda without a follow-up list is a conversation; with one, it is an audit.
This material is educational only and describes a general review practice — it is not investment, legal, or tax advice.