“A mess” is the best description for the financial affairs of many new clients coming through the door at Roger Wohlner’s financial planning office in Arlington Heights, Ill.

Often, their holdings include a gnarl of retirement and non-retirement accounts, overlapping investments that provide exposure to nearly identical assets and accounts scattered around the likes of Charles Schwab. ETrade Financial and Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch.

A bundle of accounts is not only a chore to monitor but makes it hard to get a grasp of your financial affairs, and whether they’re appropriate for the goals you’re trying to achieve, Wohlner says. “You need to look at your portfolio, not just your account,” he says.

His solution: Simplify your financial life by setting up a spreadsheet that shows every account and investment arranged by asset class. While the specifics will vary based on your portfolio, he suggests starting with the following nine categories as a guideline:

Broad equity for mutual funds that seek to represent the total stock market; large-cap for the stocks of firms like Exxon Mobil and IBM ; mid-cap for funds and stocks representing medium-sized companies like Rockwell Collins ; small-cap for smaller companies; real estate investments; alternative investments; fixed income for your bond investments; cash.

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Another option is to use the online tools available from the likes of Vanguard Group or Morningstar to do the sorting and analyzing for you. Either way, when you see all your investments listed by asset class, you’ll be able to see where you have over-invested and under-invested, Wohlner says.

Another piece of advice is to combine retirement accounts when it makes sense. Wohlner says he sees a lot of people with three or four independent retirement accounts. He recently had a client who had several IRAs, including a SEP, which is a type of tax-deferred plan for small businesses and people who are self-employed. He combined the accounts.

After simplifying accounts, reallocate your investments so that you have a diversified portfolio with a healthy mix of low-cost assets. Pay attention to taxes too. One rule of thumb is to own your bonds and bond funds in tax-deferred accounts so you won’t have to pay taxes on the regular dividends, while holding stocks and tax-efficient index mutual funds and ETFs in your taxable accounts.

While you’re in clean-up mode, make sure to update beneficiary information on retirement accounts, annuities, insurance policies and estate planning documents such as wills. Many investors make the mistaken assumption that updating a will to leave everything to, say, a second spouse is all they need to do. It’s not. If you update your will but leave the beneficiary designation for a retirement or insurance account unchanged, all the assets you parked there may well end up with that first-time spouse still on the form.