For many people, preparing for the new year means making some spur of the moment resolutions and leaving it t that. If you’re feeling a bit more ambitious, you might make SMART goals out of your resolutions and keep track of your progress throughout the year. If you really want to make the new year yours, though, you need to prepare for it.
Preparing for a new year might seem like an intensive progress that would take weeks to accomplish, but the reality is that you can probably get it done in the period between December25 and January1. All you have to do is follow a few simple steps.
Before you can look forward to the new year, take a moment and reflect on what happened this year. Think about the financial goals you accomplished, as well as any positive changes that you made. Perhaps you finally took out a mortgage on a house, or maybe you started putting more money toward your emergency fund. Maybe you even got a new job.
However, you’ll also want to think about things that could have gone better. You don’t want to beat yourself up for mistakes, but looking over your financial missteps can help you do better the next time you’re in a similar situation. It also reframes the mistake as less of a failure and more of a learning experience.
When you practice gratitude, you get benefits in several areas of your life. This includes your finances.
You can practice gratitude simply by thinking about what you were thankful for in the past year. You can also make a list that you can refer to and look over from time to time. This isn’t just a great way to improve your mood, it can also lower your stress level and help you to stop worrying about whether you’ll ever have enough money.
If you’ve got any goals you didn’t complete in the past year, start by looking at them and figuring our how much progress you’ve made towards achieving them. Once you’ve done that, think about the goals you’d like to accomplish this year.
Make sure to write down all the goals you come up with, so you don’t forget about them. If you really want to make sure you achieve the goals you have for this year, make them SMART goals—Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-Bound.
While you're writing out your goals, you might also want to think about where you'll store the money you're saving for your goals. Ask yourself, "Where can my money earn the most interest?" and "Should I invest some of the money I'm saving for my goals?"
Finally, adjust your spending plan, better known to some people as a budget. You should ideally be adjusting your budget on a monthly basis, but the new year is a good time for you to look over your budget and make sure that you’re not just sticking to it, but that the categories reflect your financial needs.
In order to adjust your budget:
Most people want the new year to be their year. However, if you really want the next year to go well for you, you should prepare in advance. Look back at the previous year, consider your successes and failures, then organize your files and think about the goals you’d like to achieve in the upcoming three hundred sixty-five days.
If you’d like some help making the new year yours, become a member at First Alliance Credit Union. We have several guides in our resource center designed to do everything from help you get out of debt to start your own small business, and we offer several accounts that will help you save more money.