This time of the year, it’s easy to get lost in the hus­tle and bus­tle of the sea­son. Last minute shop­ping to fin­ish out your gift list and get­ting ready for the hol­i­days take almost all your energy and atten­tion. But this is the best time to make sure that you take care of sev­eral impor­tant chores before the big crys­tal ball drops and the cal­en­dar switches from 2011 to 2012.

To help you make sure noth­ing falls through the cracks, we’ve put together the fol­low­ing end of year check­list to make sure you are pre­pared for the new year:

1. Make char­i­ta­ble con­tri­bu­tions: you may be able to deduct char­i­ta­ble con­tri­bu­tions from your taxes for this year if you item­ize. Make a rough esti­mate of your income and other deuc­tions for the year so you will know if your char­i­ta­ble deduc­tions will be phased out because you earn too much. The 2010 pub­li­ca­tion from the IRS about char­i­ta­ble con­tri­bu­tions can be found here.
2. Take advan­tage of your health insur­ance deductible: many health insur­ance “plan years” are on a cal­en­dar basis. If yours is and you have already met your deductible, then you will want to go ahead and make the appoint­ments with your health­care providers you have been putting off. If you haven’t already met your deductible, then you may want to sched­ule those for after the new year so that they can apply to next year’s deductible. Of course, you should never put off any­thing other than rou­tine doctor’s vis­its — don’t sac­ri­fice your health for the sake of an insur­ance deductible!
3. Com­plete your FSA spend­ing: Flex­i­ble Spend­ing Accounts (FSA’s) are “use it or lose it”. There­fore, you don’t want to end the year with unspent money in that account. If your health insur­ance plan year is on a cal­en­dar basis, then so is your FSA. If that’s the case, then add up all the receipts that qual­ify for reim­burse­ment under your FSA. If you have not yet met your FSA total, then make pur­chases of the items you need that are eli­gi­ble for reim­burse­ment through your FSA (the list from the IRS for 2010 can be found here.)
4. Update your will: Hardly any­one likes to think about dying, but it’s wise to pre­pare for that day by hav­ing an up-to-date will in place. If you don’t have a will, draw one up. If you do have one, review it to see if your life sit­u­a­tion has changed in such a way that requires you to update your it. In it, make sure you name an execu­tor and, if you have chil­dren, des­ig­nate trustees and guardians.
5. Plan taxes: In addi­tion to the char­i­ta­ble con­tri­bu­tion plan­ning described in step 1, per­form other tax plan­ning. If you item­ize and your deduc­tions are not phased out because you earn too much, you may be able to deduct things like your prop­erty taxes which often are due by Jan­u­ary 31. If that’s the case for you, then you can decide whether you’re bet­ter off mak­ing those pay­ments before the end of the year so you can deduct them on your 2011 taxes, or after the first of the year so you can deduct them on your 2012 taxes.
6. Asset review: Go through all your valu­able assets and make sure your doc­u­men­ta­tion for them is up-to-date. The kind of infor­ma­tion you should keep for your assets includes pur­chase receipts, model and ser­ial num­bers, and pho­tos or videos of the assets.
7. Insur­ance update: as you buy things, or are given them as gifts, it’s easy to foget to add them to your insur­ance poli­cies. It’s also hard to remem­ber to peri­od­i­cally review your insur­ance poli­cies to make sure you have ade­quate cov­er­age for all the things you own. Once you’ve done the review described in step 6, you should go through all your insur­ance poli­cies to review your coverage.
8. Health plan­ning: get a jump­start on your new year’s res­o­lu­tions by eval­u­at­ing your cur­rent health and set­ting goals for 2012 for your­self. Think about any changes that have hap­pened in the last year to you or your rel­a­tives so you can update your health his­tory and inform your doc­tor. For exam­ple, if a blood rel­a­tive was recently diag­nosed with dia­betes, you now have an increased risk fac­tor for dia­betes, and you should make a note to inform your doc­tor about that.
9. Phys­i­cal: the old addage that an ounce of pre­ven­tion is worth a pound of cure is def­i­nitely worth remem­ber­ing — sched­ule your annual physical.
10. House­hold chores: so that you can eas­ily change your a/c and heater air fil­ter every month, it’s help­ful to go ahead and buy 12 of them so that you have them ready and avail­able. That increases the like­li­hood that you’ll actu­ally do it. If you have a battery-operated smoke detec­tor, check its batteries.