According to Nielsen, 84% of us made New Year’s resolutions, and 29% of us made a resolution to spend less and save more.
Good on you if that was one of your resolutions!
Unfortunately, only 8% of us will stick to our resolutions long enough to have them create a positive change.
Why do so few people see them through? Because we set ourselves up for failure!
First let’s adjust your resolution a bit.
The experts say goals should be:
1) Specific
2) Ambitious, but achievable
3) Related to behavior, not results
Spending less and saving more is certainly related to behavior. But it’s not specific. And since it’s not specific who knows if it’s ambitious?
How to save more
Rather than “save more,” what if your resolution was “to save 2% more of every paycheck?”
Easy enough, right? If you agree, then bump up your 401k contributions by 2% today. Like right now.
While you’re thinking about it. Go ahead, I’ll wait….
How to spend less
“Spending less” is a trickier because you can’t put it on autopilot. The first step is to understand that you can’t improve what you don’t measure.
So let’s toss out “spending less” as a goal this year. Let’s replace it with “I will track my spending this year.”
Once you have a handle on where your money is going, it’s really easy to toss out habitual lifestyle choices that don’t bring you joy.
Resolutions are easy to keep if you keep them easy.
