The New York Times recently published an article entitled, How Should You Manage Your Money? And Keep It Short by Ron Lieber. In it, he asked several personal finance experts to summarize their “best ideas” in the space of an index card (inspired by one such internet-famous card and the book it spawned). I enjoy these sorts of pithy financial recommendations, but what really caught my eye was this call to action alongside the article:

What Would Your Card Look Like? Please make your own card with a few simple tips (or just one, or a sketch) and upload a photo of it here. We’ll display some of our favorites in the coming days.

I didn’t think I had anything to add beyond Scott Adams’ 9-point financial plan (which got me started on this path 10 years ago), but I did wonder whether others might benefit from keeping a yearly log of their financial decisions and plans, as I do on my blog. So I distilled Adams’ list down to what I thought were the 4 most important pieces of advice, and then added my own. Here it is: