The first step to realigning your portfolio is to find out where you stand today.

Get out all of your financial records—stock certificates, bonds, mutual funds, plus gold and silver coins. Start listing them below. List all your current investments, “warts and all,” so that you can get a single-sheet overview of where you now stand. Type in the value of each investment and select one of the four broad categories: stocks, bonds, cash and other (which includes gold). Don’t worry about the order, just list them all.

As you list all of your investments and their value, the percentage of your portfolio allocated to each investment will be automatically calculated.

To see what your current portfolio allocation looks like for stocks, bonds, cash and other investments, take a look at the section at the bottom of the page called "Your Current Asset Allocation." This is what your own personal pie chart currently looks like.

Note: Not every exercise presented here is mathematical. There’s also a “gut feeling” you need to develop about investments you hold now. Do they let you sleep at night? Are their gains and losses sudden...and scary? To help you quantify these “gut” feelings, I’ve drafted a Portfolio Troubleshooter that can help you play doctor with some of your sickly investments. Click here to access this worksheet.