This is the last day of the three day ramp-up for Financial Action Month, where I’ll write about a personal finance topic every day in March. Tomorrow and throughout the rest of this week I’ll start covering individual topics like phone service, groceries, life insurance, and more.

Why is this called Financial Action Month? Because even though we often know the smart thing to do with money, we do stupid things anyway. There’s a huge gap between our knowledge about money and our actions with money. As Joe Sangl said, “I took eight semesters of calculus, and I was still broke.” So each day will be about a specific topic and will end with a suggested specific action to take.

The end goal is financial freedom, which I wrote about on Day 1. To get there, our desire for financial freedom has to be stronger than our desire for convenience, for status, for the joy of shopping; that was Day 2. And we can’t start making progress toward financial freedom until we’re honest with ourselves about where we are now (that’s today’s topic). That means we have to admit to ourselves (specifically, and on paper!) how much credit card debt we have, how much student loan debt we have, how much our car payment is, and more. Hopefully you started that already by downloading the Debt Freedom Calculator (Action Item #1). It might hurt a little at first, but I promise once you’ve written everything down you’ll love being able to look at everything on one sheet of paper and then see that you can do something about it!

Have you completed the Action Items from the first two days? Those are the foundation for the rest of Financial Action Month. Here they are again:

ACTION ITEM #1: Stop accumulating new debt! And download & complete the Debt Freedom Calculator (Microsoft Excel file or web-based) from the Tools page at JosephSangl.com. Fill it out, completely and honestly (include everything except your mortgage). These two things (stop accumulating new debt, and complete the Debt Freedom Calculator) are the foundation for Financial Action Month. Do it today. You can do it!

ACTION ITEM #2: On a small piece of paper, write down your top 2 or 3 reasons for wanting to be financially free. Be specific and keep each item to 7 words or less (Guy calls it a mantra). Put the list in your wallet or purse. Maybe even wrap your list around your debit card so you have to look at it whenever you’re getting ready to spend some money (here’s my current debit card wrapper, and here’s a blank for you to write in your goals).

And here’s ACTION ITEM #3: Make sure you’ve completed Action Items #1 & #2! Again, these are the foundation for the rest of the month and when you’ve completed them honestly you’re already two big steps down the road toward financial freedom. The last part of this action step is to begin your budget (download the Excel file or use the web-based forms at the Tools page at JosephSangl.com). Don’t worry about completing all of it now, just get started with the form that fits your income pattern (the Monthly Budget Form for those paid once per month or Weekly Budget Form for those paid more than once per month). You can fill in more of it throughout the month as we go along, but go ahead and get started now. You can do it!