When the warm weather finally hits, it can signal a time of renewing and resetting after a long winter. Since Spring is officially in season, now’s a perfect time to think about doing some Spring cleaning — especially when it comes to your portfolio.

Why It’s Important to Check in on Your Portfolio

Think about where you were this time last year. How about five years ago? Consider how things have changed since then. Maybe you got married, had a child or grandchild, got divorced, changed career paths, moved to a new state, etc. Your life evolves quickly, which means sometimes it’s easy for your financial life to start falling behind. It’s important, however, for your portfolio to be aligned with where you are today and your goals for the future. If you haven’t given it much thought or reviewed your holdings in a few years, your portfolio could have fallen out of alignment.

If you’ve taken a “set it and forget it” approach to building wealth in the past, consider this the perfect time to check in on your investments and general financial health. Here are five items you can add to your Spring cleaning to-do list to make sure your portfolio is in good shape.

#1: Gather and Review Your Financial Statements

Whether you opt to receive paper copies in the mail or have gone completely digital, it’s possible you have a small backlog of financial statements sitting around somewhere. These may include statements for your bank accounts, brokerage accounts, 401(k)s, IRAs, HSAs, etc. While you may be tempted to discard them right away, use this opportunity to actually read through your recent activity and make sure everything is still in good, working order.

For example, make sure your credit card accounts don’t have any suspicious activity on them. If you set up automatic contributions to your brokerage accounts or employer-sponsored retirement plan, check that those are still going through as they should. As you’re reviewing, you may even decide that now’s a good time to adjust automatic withdrawals and contributions to better reflect your current financial situation.

You should never feel like you’re in the dark when it comes to your financial comings and goings, and checking in on your monthly or quarterly statements is a good habit to get into.

#2: Consolidate and Streamline Where Possible

We tend to naturally accumulate more financial accounts than we realize. If you aren’t rolling over or transferring your 401(k) every time you leave a job, you may have several 401(k)s that haven’t been touched or thought about in years. The same goes for checking accounts, even insurance policies. 

Look for opportunities to consolidate accounts. If you have multiple investment accounts, you may be able to save on management or other fees by gathering multiple accounts together under one broker.

Streamlining your accounts makes it much easier to keep an eye on your assets now and in the future.

#3: Review Your Current Holdings

If it’s been a while since you evaluated your portfolio’s asset allocation (either on your own or with an advisor), now’s a great time to step back and assess your holdings. As your financial life evolves, it’s possible you may become overconcentrated in certain areas or hold riskier assets than you should.

If the bulk of your wealth is tied to a 401(k), for example, you may find it more conducive to your long-term goals to diversify your holdings and explore other investment vehicles.

#4: Consider Your Investment Goals

While the importance of investing may have been distilled in you over the years, have you ever really defined what your actual investment goals are? Sitting down and thinking through how you want your portfolio to work for you is a helpful way to gauge its long-term effectiveness. 

At Belrose, we like to think of investment goals as three categories: income, security, and growth.

Different types of investments are better suited for different goals. Traditional stocks, for example, may help achieve growth, but they’re volatile in nature and don’t typically produce passive income for investors. Bonds offer security, but they aren’t as effective as other vehicles in helping you achieve your wealth-building goals. 

#5: Consider if Alternative Investments Are Right for You

An alternative investment like self-storage investing, however, can help investors achieve all three goals: earn passive income, invest securely in a hard asset, and build wealth efficiently. If you haven’t ventured outside of Wall Street or other traditional investments yet, this time of reflection and “tidying up” could be a good opportunity to find investment vehicles, such as self-storage, that better align with your wealth-building goals.

Interested in Making a Change to Your Portfolio This Spring?

Our team at Belrose is dedicated to helping investors like you achieve your goals of building passive income, investing securely, and creating significant opportunities for growth. We do this by identifying investment opportunities within the self-storage industry and presenting them to our community of private investors. Together, we’re able to acquire, build, operate, and sell properties while generating recession-resistant income and sizeable returns.

If you’d like to learn more about investing in commercial real estate, like self-storage, contact our team today.