It’s likely some aspects of your 10 year vision include financial targets. And hopefully when you did your plans in week 3 you got visibility into what it would take to achieve them. Now it’s time to get concrete.

Secure, comfortable, wealthy

One of the best exercises my wife and I did early in our marriage was create three financial plans - a secure plan, a comfortable plan, and a wealthy plan. It was only about a page:

Secure

• 1k in an emergency fund
• Term life insurance policy
• Long term disability policy
• Pay off all credit card debt, smallest balance first, roll that amount into next smallest balance, and so on.
• Get a living trust and will

Only once we did all of these things did we move on to the comfortable plan:

Comfortable

• Get emergency fund up to 6 months expenses
• Allocate to 401k first, up to employer match.
• Max out IRAs (more flexible investment options).
• Max out remaining 401k.
• Allocate investment accounts according to an asset allocation model (we used the Permanent portfolio first, and then the Yale portfolio later). Rebalance each year.
• Once we had kids, allocate to 529s up to IL tax deduction.
• Fixed rate mortgage, make bimonthly payments, with goal to eventually make an extra principal payment each month.