Your business and your personal finances are tangled. Here is where.

Where do you stand? Tick what you have already dealt with.

Be honest. Every empty box is a place where a decision in the business can quietly damage your personal position.

• 1 Decide how you pay yourself, on purpose Taking whatever is left each month is a pay decision made by default.
• 2 Separate business money from personal money Tangled accounts hide the real position of both.
• 3 Build two buffers, not one The business needs cash for slow months. You need your own, separate from it.
• 4 Plan KiwiSaver and savings around variable income Contributions that depend on a good month stop in the months you most need them.
• 5 Protect the business and the income If you are unwell, who runs it and who pays the bills? Personal guarantees raise the stakes.
• 6 Do not make the business your only retirement plan Assuming a sale price is not a plan. Build wealth outside the business too.
• 7 Plan the exit or succession before you need it No plan until there is a crisis means decisions made under pressure.
• 8 Get the legal, tax and estate basics right Structures set up for a past stage of the business may no longer fit.

A checklist tells you what to ask. A plan tells you what to do.

If you left several boxes empty, that is normal, and it is the reason a written plan exists. See what a Statement of Advice looks like, or browse the other free tools.