Spring cleaning generally involves deep cleaning the house, and discarding those things that are no longer needed or wanted. As a financial incentive, you might choose to donate those items to a charitable organization, and get a receipt for your tax file.

Gather and organize financial and legal documents for storage including your recent tax returns, insurance documents and outstanding loan agreements. Whether you are opting to maintain these documents in hard copy or electronic form, they should be kept in a safe place. If feasible, hard copy documents, should be scanned for back-up to electronic media; and existing electronic documents should be copied to a second location for back-up (e.g. USB flash drive, the cloud, etc.).

Identify financial and legal documents that will not be required for future reference; and prepare them for disposal. Since these items may contain personally identifiable information (name, social security number, date of birth, and personal account number) they should be completely shredded before disposal.

Verify the content of your credit report, since your credit score affects your borrowing power, and the interest rate that you will be required to pay on borrowed money. Fortunately, by federal law you are entitled to a free copy of your credit report, every 12 months, from each credit reporting agency. Go to annualcreditreport.com, to submit those requests. Once received, each credit report should be fully reviewed, for accuracy and completeness. You can mark and dispute errors, following the online instructions. In addition to reflecting your financial history, your credit report should inform your future financial decisions.

Review your budget to measure your progress, making sure that all expenses are being properly recorded. Compare your spending history against target amounts for each category. Modify your budget to incorporate changes in income, scheduled payments and savings account contributions. To simplify the process, download the NetWorth2b Budget & Flow app, that is now available on Google Play.