The free start-of-year checklist (so you don’t rely on memory)

If your financial plan lives in your head, it tends to get crowded out by call shifts, clinic days, and everything else that screams louder than “update beneficiaries.”

A free PDF checklist accompanies this financial checkup, titled “What Issues Should I Consider at the Start of the Year?” You can find it here: WealthKeel’s start-of-year financial checklist PDF.

It’s built to be practical, not precious. The whole idea is that you can keep it, mark it up, and reuse it year after year, because the categories don’t change much. Your life does.

And if you’ve ever said, “I’ll get to that later,” this is the tool that politely reminds you that later has a way of showing up fast.

The big 2026 tax changes from the One Big Beautiful Bill

Taxes are a part of planning that can feel like eating vegetables. You know it’s good for you, but you’d rather not. Still, if you’re a physician or another high-income professional, a few updates for 2026 can hit your return in a real way.

The big headline is the SALT deduction change (more on that in a second), but there are a few other updated numbers worth having on your radar.

Quick 2026 numbers to know (standard deduction, gifting)

The standard deduction moves again in 2026, and for many households, it’s the anchor that determines whether itemizing even makes sense.

Here are the figures called out:

Item	2026 amount
Standard deduction (married filing jointly)	$32,200
Standard deduction (single)	$16,100
Gift tax annual exclusion	$19,000
Lifetime estate and gift exemption	$15 million

That lifetime exemption number is the kind of thing that makes most people shrug and move on (fair). If it’s relevant for you, it’s not a “quick DIY” situation anymore; it’s a full planning conversation with the right pros.

One other practical point from the planning side: these tax updates show up most clearly when you actually run projections, not when you guess. If you’ve ever been surprised by a tax bill, it’s usually because the planning and the reality weren’t talking to each other during the year.

The SALT deduction increase: A big deal if you live in the “tax-heavy” states

This is the one that has been moving the needle for many physician households.

SALT is your state and local tax deduction. Think state income taxes, local taxes, property taxes, the stuff that can feel painfully obvious when you write the checks but mysteriously limited when you do your return.

In the past, many people ran straight into the same wall: the SALT deduction was capped at $10,000. So you could pay far more than that (and plenty of physicians do), but your itemized deduction still got stuck at that cap.

For 2026, that cap jumps way up.

• The SALT deduction cap is now $40,400 for most filers.
• For married filing separately, it’s $20,200 (and yes, that filing status can still matter for physicians dealing with student loan strategy).

There’s also a phase-out tied to income. The phase-out for 2026 begins at $550,000 (and the benefit is described as phasing out around the $600,000 range).

So what does this mean in real life?

If your household income is below roughly $500,000 and you live in a state where property taxes and state income taxes are chunky, you might have just picked up a much larger deduction than you were used to. For someone who was capped at $10,000 and now can reach toward $40,000, that’s up to a $30,000 increase in potential deductions.

And here’s the part that matters: that extra deduction can be the difference between taking the standard deduction and itemizing, or it can make itemizing suddenly worth it again.

This is especially meaningful in places like New York, Illinois (including Chicago), California, New Jersey, and Connecticut, basically the states that tend to be major medical hubs and also love their tax revenue.

The planning takeaway is simple: if you’re used to assuming SALT “doesn’t matter because of the cap,” that assumption is outdated for 2026. It’s worth checking your itemized deductions (often shown on Schedule A) and seeing how your tax picture changes under the new limit.

A couple of other tax notes that came up (helpful, but not always relevant)

A few other items were mentioned that are worth a quick reality check.

First, there are overtime deductions now that sound like they could help in medicine. The catch is that most physicians are not classified as non-exempt under the FLSA, so the people who benefit most may not look like your typical attending physician. It’s one of those “cool in theory” tax updates that may not move your personal needle.

Second, a couple of strategy reminders showed up:

• Tax-loss harvesting and managing unrealized gains tend to be more relevant later in the year, once you can see what actually happened in your accounts.
• Backdoor Roth IRA contributions are often handled early in the year for high-income households, even if the market is sitting at all-time highs.

That last point can feel weird, by the way. Buying when the market is high never feels like a bargain. But if your timeline is 10, 15, or 20-plus years, the “high” today often looks like a discount in hindsight. Not always comfortable, but that’s the reality of long-term investing.

1) Personal goals: Keep them simple, and actually track them

If you set goals last year, you already have useful data for 2026. You can look back and ask, what did you finish, what got half-finished, and what quietly disappeared sometime around April?

This isn’t about calling them “resolutions.” It’s about deciding what stays on the plan, what gets tweaked, and what gets deleted because it never mattered that much.

The easiest way to do this is to keep your goal list short. Your brain can hold a few priorities at once, but if you write down 14 “must-do” financial goals, you’ll end up doing the classic human thing, which is… none of them.

A clean setup looks like this:

• Pick three main goals you’re confident you can hit.
• Add one or two stretch goals if you want to push.
• Decide how you’ll measure progress (monthly, quarterly, whatever you’ll actually do).

The checklist examples are the usual suspects for high-income professionals, because they work:

• Maxing a 529 plan
• Maxing a 401(k) or 457
• Starting (or finally getting consistent with) a backdoor Roth IRA
• Building up an emergency fund
• Setting a clear debt payoff target

The real win isn’t the goal list, it’s the tracking. If you don’t have some kind of recurring check-in, it’s too easy to assume you’re “on track” while your cash flow quietly disagrees.

2) Cash flow: “Money in, money out” beats budgeting guilt

Budgeting can feel like being grounded. Cash flow feels like being informed.

At least once per year, you want a simple review: did anything materially change?

• Did income jump (new contract, new RVU structure, new job)?
• Did income drop (reduced clinical time, partner changes, practice shift)?
• Did expenses creep up (childcare, private school, housing, lifestyle drift)?
• Did expenses drop (refi, moving, paid-off loan)?

Once you know what changed, you can look at the checklist-style items that tend to trip people up:

1. Are your retirement and IRA contributions on pace (and if you do a backdoor Roth IRA, is it actually getting done)?
2. Do you have any unused FSA funds from last year, and are you using the grace period correctly?
3. If you’re subject to RMDs, are you taking the right amounts on time (including for inherited accounts that carry distribution rules)?
4. If you make annual gifts, are you organizing that early so it’s not a December scramble (family gifts and donor-advised fund giving were both called out)?

Cash flow is also where your financial plan becomes real. Goals are great, but the day-to-day movement of money is what makes them happen.

3) Assets and debt: Emergency fund, investing check-in, and credit protection

This section is where you look under the hood. Not because something’s wrong, but because waiting until something is wrong is expensive.

Start with the classic: the emergency fund.

If you used it during the holidays, that’s fine. That’s what it’s for. The bigger mistake is pretending the emergency fund is sacred, then swiping a credit card because you don’t want that savings number to drop below a mental “line in the sand.” The emergency fund’s job is to help you avoid bad debt. Use it as needed, then make a plan to refill it.

From there, take a hard look at risk and rates.

The market had a good year in 2025. That’s nice, but it can also make your portfolio quietly drift into more risk than you intended. Your annual review is the time to ask: Does this still align with your risk tolerance and timeline, or did you end up here because the market ran up?

Interest rates also shift the math on many decisions, especially around debt and cash reserves. This is why an annual review of account performance and overall allocation is still worth doing, even when you feel “busy but fine.”

One underrated item in this section is credit protection:

• Freezing your credit is now much easier than it used to be. It can be done online with the three major credit bureaus, and you can unfreeze it quickly when you actually need a credit check (car purchase, mortgage, and so on).
• Reviewing your credit report and score is also easier now, as many credit cards display a score. Small ups and downs aren’t the point, but a large drop is worth attention.

High income doesn’t protect you from identity theft. If anything, it can make you a more tempting target.

4) Tax prep habits that make the rest of the year easier

The big tax law changes get the attention, but boring tax prep habits are what keep your life from turning into a shoebox of documents.

At the start of the year, you want to get organized around document storage and the basic flow of what you’ll need when tax time hits. Even a simple system helps because it reduces the “hunt” later.

This is also where you sanity-check early-year moves like retirement contributions, including backdoor Roth IRA funding if that’s part of your plan.

And yes, the market being at all-time highs can make investing feel awkward. Still, for long-term strategies, consistency tends to matter more than perfect timing.

5) Insurance: The annual scan that prevents nasty surprises

Insurance review is not exciting. It’s also the kind of thing you only appreciate after you’ve seen a gap in coverage cost someone real money.

You’re looking for changes, not perfection.

Health insurance is usually tied to open enrollment, but life events don’t care about your HR calendar. If you’re planning for childbirth, surgeries, or major treatments, you want to make sure your coverage matches what’s coming. Some academic setups may also have different timing, including mid-year options.

Then you’ve got the other policies that tend to matter more as your income and net worth rise:

• Life insurance
• Disability insurance
• Long-term care considerations
• Property and casualty coverage (homeowners, auto, umbrella)
• Personal articles coverage if you’ve added high-value items

The goal is simple: no silent holes in coverage, no outdated limits, and no “wait, that isn’t covered?” moments.

6) Legal and estate planning: Small updates, big impact

Estate planning gets ignored because it feels like something you do once. In real life, it’s something you re-check when life changes.

A few common triggers:

• Family changes (new kids, marriages, divorces)
• Kids moving from minor to adult status
• Property titling updates (new home, new state, changes in ownership)
• Any shift in who you’d want making decisions for you, medically or financially

Much of estate planning is state-specific, especially regarding probate and how the process works. The federal estate piece tends to show up when you’re dealing with larger wealth levels (that $15 million lifetime exemption number is your signpost here).

If you haven’t read your documents in years, the odds are high that they don’t match your current life. Not because you did anything wrong, but because life doesn’t stand still.

Use the checklist all year, not just in January

This checkup works best when you treat it like a living list, not a one-time event.

A simple way to keep it real is to look at your net worth at the end of last year, then decide what you want it to be by the end of 2026. That number won’t tell you everything, but it does cut through much of the noise.

Then you revisit the big six categories as the year moves along: goals, cash flow, assets and debt, tax issues, insurance, and legal. Nothing fancy. Just consistent.

Conclusion

If 2026 has a theme, it’s this: small check-ins prevent big cleanups. The One Big Beautiful Bill changes, especially the higher SALT cap, can reshape your tax outcome, but only if you notice early enough to plan around it. Run through the six areas, make a few clear decisions, and keep the list somewhere you’ll actually revisit. Your future self doesn’t need perfection; you just need follow-through.