With the quick approach of the new year, a lot of people are making New Year’s Resolutions. And of course, we all have the basic resolutions – eat better, get more sleep, try something new. But what about your money? What are your financial New Year’s Resolutions?
Be a better budgeter
Our budget really changed this year when our son switched daycares. I have no regrets about the change – he is in an absolutely phenomenal school right now – but the monthly cost more than doubled. We’re making it work, but we’re certainly not saving like we were previously able to and I think we need to be having more frequent discussions about where our money is going.
Increase savings for our child
When we had our baby, we immediately said that we should start setting aside money for his college education. And we have absolutely not been doing that. We set aside all of his gift money for him, but we’ve not been doing any sort of contributions, nor have we opened any sort of a savings plan for him. He’s only a year and a half old, but college (or whatever his future holds) could be very expensive, so we want to be prepared. Obviously, it will be significantly easier to save once we’re not paying so much for daycare, but we can’t just wait until kindergarten to start saving
Continue to Declutter
Decluttering might not seem like a Financial New Year’s Resolution, but I feel like it qualifies in two ways.
- I’ve been selling a number of the different things that I’m decluttering, so I’m able to bring in a bit of additional money.
- By decluttering and organizing, I discover what I already own and don’t end up buying something that I already have.
I recently found a great 365 day decluttering challenge. Do I think I will declutter daily? Absolutely not. But it’s certainly a great place to start, and even if I do a quarter of the assignments, I’ll have made a huge impact on our house.
We’re having some work done on our house later this year, so I also need to go through our storage spaces and clear out the things we absolutely do not need. There are plenty of things that we have just squirreled away and it makes no sense to keep all of these things. We can very easily get rid of a lot of the stuff we have and never use, and again, that will prevent us from buying things we truly don’t need.
Increase regular charitable donations
My charitable giving is haphazard at best, and I want to be more intentional about it and make it a monthly thing, at least to set aside money to donate to organizations that are important to me. This does somewhat fall into budgeting, but I think it’s bigger than that.
Read More:
- Financial New Year’s Resolutions : Challenges and SMART Goals
- New Year’s Financial Goals for 2021
- 2019 Financial Wrap-Up – Did I Meet My Goals?
Megan is a 40-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
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