A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s “Money 101 newsletter with Sharon Epperson,” an eight-part series to help you achieve financial freedom, with special monthly editions to continue to improve your financial well-being. Sign up here to receive the newsletters straight to your inbox.

Spring is a great time to refresh your finances with a “deep clean,” just as you may clean out your home and garden this time of year.

“With the current volatility in the markets and the uncertainty in the air, it is prudent to control what we can control,” said Jody D’Agostini, a certified financial planner and senior partner with the Falcon Financial Group in Morristown, New Jersey. 

Doing some “spring cleaning” for your finances, she added, can “make you feel more secure and perhaps bring more order into your world.”

Here are some key considerations financial advisors recommend to dust away poor or outdated financial habits and bring a fresh perspective. 

Organize your financial documents in a way that’s easy to access and understand in a filing cabinet or a digital folder. You can start by pulling together bank and credit card statements, investment account summaries, insurance policies and your most recent tax returns.

In addition, create a “My Social Security” account on the Social Security Administration’s website to check your earnings records, get estimates of your monthly retirement benefits and manage current benefits. Review your statement, download a copy and contact the Social Security Administration if there are any mistakes. 

“It’s worth noting that owning individual stocks involves a more concentrated risk than investing in exchange-traded funds or mutual funds, which combine stocks to help spread the risk,” said Lazetta Rainey Braxton, a CFP and founder and managing principal of virtual firm The Real Wealth Coterie. She is also a member of the CNBC Advisor Council.

As you review your portfolio, make sure your investment strategy stays in sync with your financial objectives and tolerance for risk. If it doesn’t, you need to make some adjustments.

With strong gains from the stock market in 2023 and 2024, it may be time to rebalance your portfolio. For peace of mind, you may need more bonds or cash because the turmoil in the stock market is making you too anxious. 

Just remember that a decline in a major stock index is not the same percentage loss you may experience with your investments. “Look at your portfolio a little bit differently than you look at the news headlines around what happened to the S&P 500,” said Brad Klontz, a CFP and psychologist and managing partner of YMW Advisors in Boulder, Colorado. “Chances are, that’s not where all your money is.”

If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, reconsider ways to build cash reserves for a cushion in case of emergencies.

“Get creative,” said Winnie Sun, a co-founder and managing director of Sun Group Wealth Partners in Irvine, California. She said you could take on a side gig, like delivering DoorDash, or sell appliances, furniture or clothes you no longer need on eBay or Poshmark.

Sun and Klontz are also both CNBC Advisor Council members.

Sun recommended that, if you’re a homeowner, you should open a home equity line of credit at a bank or credit union if you qualify. “You want to have it in place as an emergency line in addition to your emergency fund,” she said.  After all, having sufficient cash reserves brings peace of mind — and that’s priceless.

Paper checks were already dying a slow death.

President Donald Trump on March 25 signed an executive order mandating that all federal departments and agencies end their use of paper checks and switch to electronic payments by Sept. 30.

The U.S. Treasury now has about six months to phase out the paper checks it uses for various purposes, including tax refunds and the roughly 456,000 Social Security checks that are mailed monthly.

The executive order will “modernize how the government handles money, switching from old-fashioned paper-based payments to fast, secure electronic payments,” the administration said in a fact sheet on the order.

“Paper-based payments, such as checks and money orders, impose unnecessary costs, delays, and risks of fraud, lost payments, theft, and inefficiencies,” the White House said.

Under the order, all government departments and agencies will have to issue disbursements via electronic transfer methods, like direct deposit, debit or credit card payments, digital wallets and real-time transfers.

Consumers will have until then to set up an online bank account or some form of digital payment option, with limited exceptions for those who do not have access to banking services or electronic payment systems.

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Banking groups applauded the move.

“We welcome President Trump’s executive order mandating that the federal government cease issuing paper checks for all disbursements, including government benefits and tax refunds,” Rob Nichols, president and CEO of the American Bankers Association said in a statement. “Despite a continued decline in business and consumer use of checks, check fraud has continued to rise.”

Check fraud, mail theft and identity scams have exploded in recent years, according to Haywood Talcove, CEO of LexisNexis Risk Solutions’ government group. A 2024 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office estimated that the federal government could lose between $233 billion and $521 billion a year to fraud.

“Checks aren’t safe anymore,” Talcove said. “It’s where the criminal groups are feasting.”

As part of the executive order, payments made to the federal government — such as fees, fines, loans and tax refunds — must also be made electronically.

With significant advancements in security — thanks to authentication, monitoring and data encryption — retailers’ and consumers’ shift to contactless and digital payment methods will only continue to grow, accelerating the move toward a “check zero” world, according to Scott Anchin, vice president of operational risk and payments policy for the Independent Community Bankers of America. 

However, there are still certain groups that rely on paper checks, including some of the nation’s most vulnerable populations such as social security beneficiaries and those who receive rental assistance, or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

Check writers generally skew older and are likely at the margins of the banking community, according to Anchin. Americans over the age of 55 were most likely to write checks every month, the survey from GoBankingRates found.

But these groups are also most at risk of being targeted by scammers, Talcove said. “The elderly are significantly disadvantaged by the antiquated systems and you have to get them into digital payments.”

Although checks, as we know them today, first originated in the 11th century, they didn’t become mainstream until the early 20th century following the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, according to a historical survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

But back then, “everyday people didn’t have checking accounts, that was for rich people,” Stephen Quinn, professor of economics at Texas Christian University and co-author of the Atlanta Fed’s report, previously told CNBC. “It wasn’t until after World War II that checking accounts were a common thing.”

Postwar prosperity greatly expanded the use of checking accounts to middle-class households, making checks the most widely used noncash payment method in the U.S., according to the Atlanta Fed.

Personal checks continued to gain steam until the mid-1990s, when credit and debit cards largely took over. Since 2000, check-writing has plummeted by nearly 75%, according to the U.S. Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

Despite the rapid decline, “a form of payment with a thousand-year history is unlikely to vanish overnight,” the Atlanta Fed report said.

And yet, today’s young adults are increasingly eschewing the traditional banking and credit infrastructure altogether in favor of peer-to-peer payment apps.

Quinn said his students rely almost exclusively on digital wallet payments such as Apple Pay, Venmo and Zelle — hardly anyone carries cash, and it’s likely that few even know how to write a check.

Mobile payment apps have become de facto bank accounts even though, unlike banks or credit unions, these financial services are not FDIC-insured.

Still, there remains a place for personal checks, Quinn said.

“The paper check might linger where it began, at the high end — for large one-off payments,” he said, such as charitable donations or real estate transactions. “In this way, checks might hold on for some time.”

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Fast-moving changes at the Social Security Administration by the Trump administration’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency have prompted concerns that it may be more difficult for beneficiaries to access the agency’s services.

Some experts are raising concerns that efforts to update the agency’s systems could impact the continuity of benefits.

“Now I’m concerned that benefits could get disrupted,” said Jason Fichtner, a former deputy commissioner at the Social Security Administration who was appointed by President George W. Bush.

Recent changes that have been announced by the agency are cause for concern, experts including Fichtner say.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed not to touch Social Security benefits. Yet recent changes could make it more difficult for eligible Americans to access benefits.

The SSA under the Trump administration has moved to eliminate 7,000 Social Security employees and close six regional offices, Fichtner and Kathleen Romig, a former Social Security Administration senior official, wrote in a recent op-ed. Romig is the director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The cuts will affect the service Americans receive when they either visit Social Security’s website, which has experienced glitches; call its 800 number, which has long wait times; or visit a field office, which can be crowded, they wrote.

That may make it more difficult for eligible Americans to claim benefits, particularly those with disabilities, who may run the risk of dying before receiving the money for which they are eligible.

“The Social Security Administration is in crisis, and people’s benefits are at risk,” Fichtner and Romig wrote.

Fichtner said his worries are elevated following reports that the Social Security Administration under DOGE plans to move “tens of millions of lines of code” written in a programming language known as COBOL within an accelerated time frame of a few months.

“If you start messing with the system’s code, that could impact those who are currently getting benefits now, and that’s a new front-and-center concern,” said Fichtner, who is a senior fellow at the National Academy of Social Insurance and executive director at the Retirement Income Institute at the Alliance for Lifetime Income.

While the Social Security’s systems could use an upgrade, projects of this size are typically handled over a period of years, not months, Fichtner said. Moreover, they typically start out with smaller tests, such as with one state, to identify bugs or other issues, before expanding regionally and then nationally, he said.

“You can’t just flip a switch one night and expect to be able to upgrade,” Fichtner said. “It takes due diligence, and you have to understand the complexity of the programs.”

Before the COBOL transition reports, Fichtner said he had not been worried about benefit interruptions, though he had been concerned that changes at the agency may impact customer service and that applicants for benefits may see delays.

“There is no validity to these reports,” a Social Security Administration spokesperson told CNBC via email.

In an email statement, the White House also said, “There is no validity to these reports.”