Retirement: How To Start Taking Charge If Your Finances Are A Mess

My finances are a mess, how do I start taking charge?

Keep everything that comes from financial companies. Keep it in order. Don't throw anything away, and look at it, and sit down and work out a budget. What do you spend every month, or every week? What's your income every month or every week? Write it all down. And pretty soon you'll see a pattern in it, and you'll discover that either you're spending more than your income, which is, of course, in the long term a recipe for disaster, or you'll discover that you can cut back on your spending, things you're buying that you don't really need to buy. Try and control your spending. Look at your debts, pay off the most expensive ones first. If you don't know which ones are the most expensive, that's obviously part of the problem. But sit down and think about it. Spend some time on it. Because if you don't organize it, if you don't spend some time on it, you are going to end up probably in debt and certainly in a mess.