A quarter of Americans are expecting a year-end cash bonus, according to a recent MONEY/ICR poll. Let's assume you're one of them. (Congratulations.) What are you going to do with this windfall? Put the money in a Roth IRA? Set it aside for a Caribbean vacation? Sock it away in your kids' 529 college accounts?

Make your decision now. "If you don't think about where you're going to put your bonus before it actually arrives, it will vaporize - poof!" says Kevin Sale, a financial planner in Bloomington, Minn. "Don't fritter it away on things that don't mean that much to you."