Fix your finances in a day

Roll over those old 401(k)s. Change jobs a few times and you can leave a litter of 401(k) accounts behind in your wake. See if you can transfer the old accounts into your current employer's plan (that means a call to Human Resources) or roll them into an individual retirement account. Any brokerage or mutual fund family will help you with the paperwork to transfer the money into an existing IRA or set up one. Not sure where to start? Charles Schwab, E*Trade or TD Ameritrade can be good discount brokerage options, or try Vanguard, Fidelity or T. Rowe Price.

Look at retirement planning

Re-balance your 401(k). Many people pick their 401(k) investment options more or less at random and then never alter their haphazard choices. This approach can leave you overexposed to risk, hurt your returns or both. It's smarter to pick an asset allocation that reflects your tolerance for risk and time until retirement, then periodically re-balance. (Re-balancing means moving your investments around to restore the mix of stocks, bonds and cash to your original target mix.)

You can find answers to many of your 401(k) questions in MSN Money's Fast Answers, and MSN Money's 401(k) Quick Check will compare your available funds' performance and risk records. Your company may offer advice on its own. (See "Even bad 401(k) advice is better than none.") If your company doesn't provide investment help, you can find you can get specific fund recommendations from FinancialEngines.com for $39.95 a quarter.

Or you can take the easy way out and put all your money into your plan's "life cycle" or "target date maturity" fund. These funds pick the investments and asset allocation, re-balancing as necessary. For target-date funds, look for names like Retirement 2015 or Retirement 2030, which are supposed to align with the year you expect to retire. (Here is a list of Morningstar top-ranked funds with target dates 2000 to 2014, from 2015 to 2029 and 2030 and beyond.) Life-cycle funds tend to keep a steady asset allocation over time and may be divided into "conservative," "moderate" and "aggressive" options, while the target-date funds typically reduce risk exposure over time. Vanguard, Fidelity and T. Rowe Price offer well-reviewed funds of this type; if your plan doesn't have one of their options, look for a life-cycle or target-date fund with an expense ratio below 1%.

Getting around to insurance, college, wills

Raise your deductibles. One of the easiest ways to save money on car, home and even health insurance is to agree to pay more out of pocket before your coverage kicks in. If you have no savings, you might want to skip this step for now, but read "3 costly myths about insurance" to understand why savvy consumers choose higher deductibles and pay the smaller expenses on their own as soon as they can.

You might even reconsider whether you need anything more than liability on your car at all. (See "Drop the insurance on your clunker.")

Get some insurance quotes. Shopping for insurance is a pain. There's no way around that. But because you can potentially save hundreds or even thousands of dollars, it's worth the effort at least every few years. You can get an individual online quote for auto insurance, life insurance, health insurance or homeowners insurance, or you can check out sites such as Insure.com and Insweb.com. Have your current policies nearby. Note which insurers have been advertising heavily in your area; they might be offering breaks as well.

Set up a 529 college savings plan for your kid. Your financial priorities should be saving for your own retirement and paying off any toxic debt (credit cards, payday loans, etc.). But as college savings expert Joe Hurley of SavingForCollege.com notes, it's also a good idea to get into the habit of saving for your children's future education, even if it's just $25 a month. Fortunately, 529 plans will let you start with that little (or even less), as long as you sign up for automatic monthly transfers from your checking account. Morningstar.com compiles a list of the best and worst 529 savings plans that can help you decide what to look for (and to avoid). If your state offers a tax deduction, you might want to start with its plan. If you don't get a tax break, you can't go too far wrong with the age-weighted plans run by Vanguard, T. Rowe Price, TIAA-CREF or Fidelity.

Draft a will. If ever a task was designed to encourage procrastination, it's creating a will. But our hard-wired reluctance to consult our own mortality can create a nightmare for those we love -- and sometimes for ourselves (read "3 legal documents you shouldn't live without" for details).

If you have minor children, you need to do this now. Read "Who will take care of your kids if you die?" for the reasons why it's so important to get over your inertia.

Quicken WillMaker can help you draft the necessary documents. If your situation isn't complicated, it may be all you need. But if you have a lot of debt, a contentious family, a sizable estate -- say, $1 million or above -- or other complicating factors, make an appointment with an estate-planning attorney for help.

You may have more financial tasks on your list, and getting everything done in a single day may not be possible. So highlight two to four tasks that are the most crucial and knock those out first. When you're done, share the results of your Money Day -- or your plans for the next one -- on the Your Money message board.

Liz Pulliam Weston's new book, "Easy Money: How to Simplify Your Finances and Get What You Want Out of Life," is now available. Columns by Weston, the Web's most-read personal-finance writer and winner of the 2007 Clarion Award for online journalism, appear every Monday and Thursday, exclusively on MSN Money. She also answers reader questions on the Your Money message board.

Published Jan. 24, 2008

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