It’s the first week of the first month of a brand new year, and that means now is a great time to get your fiscal house in order. Over the next four weeks, I will be taking you through four easy assignments that will help you to get on top of your 2011 financial goals.

First up is something that we all need to make sure we do from time to time, and that is to conduct a personal financial inventory of all of our assets.

By this I mean you need to take a very close look at how much money you actually have, and in what type of asset class that money resides (equities, bonds, real estate, etc.). You also have to make sure that you know where, and in what type of accounts, all of your money resides. And while this may seem simple on its face, you’d be surprised to learn just how high the percentage is of investors I speak with who aren’t quite sure about where all of their money is, or in what kind of accounts (retirement or taxable) they have.

You can start this process by simply creating a list of your taxable assets, as well as your tax-deferred assets. One of the benefits of this exercise will be to find out how many companies you’re currently doing business with. If that number is more than two or three, then you seriously should consider doing some consolidating.

You also should make sure that you include any life insurance policies or variable annuities in your personal financial inventory, since they also are part of your overall investment picture. Now, in this first step, we are not concerned with the individual equity or bond positions that you own. An analysis of these positions comes later. Rather, we are more concerned with just making sure that we know how much of our net worth is in liquid assets, and how much is tied up in real estate and other non-liquid holdings.

Here is a quick, step-by-step guide to conducting an inventory of your assets.

1) Collect all of your year-end statements as you receive them during the next several weeks, and keep them in one main file folder.

2) Make separate lists of your taxable assets and your tax-deferred assets.

3) Make a separate list of your life insurance and annuities.

4) Count the total number of financial companies you do business with.

5) Tally up all of your current debt, then determine if you can pay off any of that debt in 2011 (hint, start with the highest interest rate loans first).

Next week, we’ll have another simple assignment for you, so make sure that you get started on this first assignment today.