The other day, a buddy and I were talking and he was confiding how tight their finances are and how guilty he feels that they don't have any retirement/savings. They don't have a will/trust, life insurance, anything. I could tell he felt stressed out of his mind about it. I encouraged him to start with some life insurance because they have four kids and he and his wife are both healthy and young, and life insurance is easy and cheap. I also counseled him to use Personal Capital (or whatever app of his choosing) to see all their finances in one, easy place. Life is hard and we all struggle financially at times. We have all been there! But there are a few things we can all do.

I'm no expert, but a few things I highly recommend you go out and do today if you haven't already are:

-Get life insurance. Like, right now! It is cheap and easy. If you don't have pre-existing conditions, there is no excuse not to have this and it will bring you a lot of peace of mind. Don't get only $200k or something, get at least $1mm. Think about how expensive life is. You can get $1mm or more of coverage for $30/month (or even less) if you're under 40 and healthy (side note: I work with financial advisors and I could tell you horror story after horror story of someone passing away in an accident and leaving behind their S.O. and young kids without insurance. Please don't make this mistake. It only compounds a tragedy and in most cases, it is completely avoidable.
-If you can afford it, hire an attorney to setup a living trust. If you can't afford an attorney, use Legal Zoom
-Get Personal Capital or some other App of your choosing to monitor all your accounts/credit cards/loans, etc. in one, easy place. It takes some work to set up, but once it's set up, you and your spouse can easily see and track everything. You can search any expense/payment and find it all in seconds. It shows you your net worth and it's actually pretty fun to monitor it together with your spouse and try to increase it