21 insights from personal finance professionals to help you make a plan for your money in 2021

"Let your life lead your money — that's the first thing. What is it that you aspire to do? What do you value? What are your goals? Let's start there. Then the money is not necessarily a second. It's a complement; it's a partner."

— Preston Cherry, certified financial planner and founder of Concurrent Financial Planning

"When I see people with a financial plan, one of the things I tell them is to expect the unexpected.

"As long as you're walking on this earth, you're going to have an unexpected expense. I call them 'the known unknown,' and those are expenses that you know are going to happen, but you don't know when."

— Tania Brown, certified financial planner with SaverLife:

"What I like to have clients do is automate their transfers to whatever the goals are, things that they're trying to achieve, and have those in separate accounts so that they can clearly see their progress. And it's all just sort of set up, and it's happening for them. So they make the decision once, and then it triggers on its own."

— Anna N'Jie-Konte, certified financial planner and founder of Dare to Dream Financial Planning

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"To quote my grandmother, 'Facts are stubborn things.' And so I think that the mistake that many people make is embarrassment, shame, bury their head in the sand.

"The best thing that anyone with any kind of debt can do is build a personal balance sheet. It doesn't have to be fancy. It can just be pencil to paper on a legal pad with your debts on one side, and your assets on another.

"And human capital is an asset, too. So, if you have a salary, if you have money coming in, certainly list that. But those facts are stubborn things, and you need to know exactly what you're facing, what your payments are, and have an idea of how you're going to approach it."

— Alison Hutchinson, senior vice president at Brown Brothers Harriman

"The biggest advice is to get organized around your student loans. Write them all down, and see what you have to tackle.

"It always seems like a bigger task at first than it really is. And once you get organized, you can kind of see the big picture a lot clearer, so you know who your loans are with, are they subsidized, are they unsubsidized, are they private loans, are they federal loans, and getting an understanding around that. And then just going and looking at your options."

— Carmen Perez, personal-finance blogger at Make Real Cents

"Irrespective of whether you decide to take on your partner's debt or not, that debt is going to affect your relationship. Because it will either limit your partner's ability to do certain things or it'll limit your ability as a team to be able to go out and do future things together.

"So what I recommend to couples is to tackle debt as a team, even if you're not taking over that person's debt, or paying, or contributing to the payment of that debt. The best part about being in a relationship is you have a partner to help you navigate all that."

— Aditi Shekar, founder and CEO of Zeta

"Review your credit reports regularly. They provide a complete record of your debt-related financial relationships, can be used as a resource for working with your creditors on payment planning, and are a critical tool in managing your debt through difficult financial situations.

"Keeping your debts as low as possible will put you in a better financial position when the economy emerges from this crisis."

— Rod Griffin, senior director of consumer education and advocacy at Experian

Read more » How to pay back your student-loan debt, no matter where you start or what type of loans you have

"Active investing is a skill that can be learned and developed over time. For those that do it successfully, it is not an emotional exercise. In fact, successful active investors put measures in place to protect themselves from emotional decision making. If one lacks either the will, skill, or time, passive investing is likely a better strategy."

— Wilson Muscadin, a financial coach and founder of The Money Speakeasy

"You don't want to be silly about how you invest and incur costs that are perhaps not necessary, but I don't think there's any amount that's too small.

"I'd rather you do something than nothing, especially with a 401(k) when your employer will match whatever you put in. That's basically a 100% guaranteed return. You don't get a lot of free lunches, as we say in finance. That might be one of the few, and you're giving up on an incredible opportunity if you don't put any money away at all."

— Scott Pedvis, financial advisor at Wells Fargo

"It's very important to stick to your game plan, to understand what you're going to be using the money for, and really know that there are going to be points where the market is not doing so great.

"But if you have a long-term game plan that you want to stay in with a risk associated with your investment portfolio, it's best to stay the course. And if you can't stomach the risk the portfolio you're in might be subject to, then reevaluate and determine whether it makes sense to scale that risk down."

— Joseph Edmondson, certified financial planner at Equitable Advisors

"One of the big things you want to know is to take comfort in the context.

"You don't want to focus on the 30 to 45 worst days we have seen in 10 years and let it make you forget about the good times that we had for 10 straight years. You want to have that context and know that long-term investors almost always win."

— Kevin Matthews, a financial advisor and founder of Building Bread

Read more » The smart investor's toolkit: 7 tips from personal finance professionals for building wealth through investing

"We're living through extraordinary times. While each of us is learning to persevere through this moment, don't anchor your vision of the future to the current environment."

— Sandi Bragar, certified financial planner and partner and managing director in planning, strategy, and research at Aspiriant

"What I find people do is they focus on a thing that they cannot control and ignore the things they can.

"For instance, if someone loses their job, they had no control over the job loss, but you have 100% control over calling your creditors and letting them know you may not be able to pay the bills. You have 100% control of going in your budget and cutting out unnecessary items, like cable."

— Tania Brown

"My biggest piece of advice, and this is hard, OK, I'm not saying it's easy: People have to stop comparing yourselves to others, especially over social media.

"You have to define your own goals, because we all know what makes us happy. You have to start to align your money to your values, to the things that make you happy. That can be at least an important first step in trying to not compare yourself too much to others."

— Kelly Lannan

"When you're looking at your spending for the month, if you go over on a category and then you say, 'OK, well, I'll just start over next month,' I always tell people that's not the way to go about it.

"It's the same with nutrition or health goals. It's not like, 'OK, I'll just start over next month' or 'I'll start over next year,' but it's 'OK, what can I do for the rest of the day to make this better?' Or 'What can I do tomorrow to make this situation better?' So maybe it's 'OK, if I overspent on this category, is there another category that I can cut back on for the rest of the week or month?'"

— Katie Oelker, financial coach

"Being good with money doesn't mean you're perfect with money. None of us are. I think that's one of the things that we have to tell people to come to grips with: You will do things that you'll look back and wonder why. But no one's perfect with money."

— Rod Griffin

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