Suze Orman: 3 things to do right now

Each year, we like to turn to Suze Orman for some financial dos and don'ts. This year, there's a little something for everyone:

All right, everybody - Listen up! Because I'm going to be giving you three pieces of advice that you should know for three stages of your life.

Let's start with students.

Here you are, you're about to go to school, and you need a scholarship to pay for your schooling.

Do you know that many scholarship companies now are going on Twitter, going on your Facebook. They're seeing what have you written, what have you shown about yourself? Because if any of that is risque or off-color, you just may be DENIED for a scholarship because of what is on social media.

So you have to be really careful.

Now, you're a little bit older, you've gotten married. Or you're older, and you've had a child, you're a single parent. And you decide to be responsible, so you get a term life insurance policy and leave your child as the beneficiary of that policy.

Don't you know that minors CANNOT inherit money? So if you die - especially single mommies out there - if you die and your kid is five months old, what are they gonna do with that money? It will go into a blocked account.

You should have the beneficiary be a living, revocable trust, where somebody is named, to take care of the money for your child.

And, last but not least: You own a home. You're getting close to retirement. You're 45 years of age or older. If you're going to stay in that home forever, what should you do? You want to catch up.

Pay down the mortgage of your home, so that by the time you retire it's PAID OFF. If you could do that, you're going to have more money, because you have less expenses.

Now, if you're NOT going to stay in that home forever, DO NOT - and I repeat, DO NOT - pay down the mortgage of that home.

All right, those are the three things that I want you to know. So what are you waiting for? You are to go down them all - right now.