Suze Orman walks women through a 5-month process for gaining control of their financial lives in her book Women & Money.

I want to make myself walk through this plan one step at a time. I quite often tend to dwell on those steps that are easy for me and skip altogether those that I struggle with or that take too much energy.

The first month's focus is checking and savings accounts. The assignment is to:

- learn how to read the statement and balance your checkbook
- stop paying for checking services
- know the difference between checking and savings accounts
- appreciate the importance of savings accounts to financial security
- earn the highest savings account interest as possible
- use an automatic investment plan to build a savings account to cover 8 months of living expenses
- open a savings account just for yourself in addition to a family account

I already have conquered all of these requirements so no need to spend time on these.