Did you set any financial resolutions this year? Do you wish you had?
It may be halfway through January, but it’s never too late to make positive changes and turn your finances around. We had a few of the experts in the personal finance realm shed some light on setting financial New Year’s resolutions. Find out what major PF bloggers have resolved to accomplish financially this year.
Tips on Setting a Financial Resolution
-Teresa Britton, MomsWhoSave.com
Lots of us resolve to get in better shape at this time of year, but what kind of shape are your finances in? Maybe you need a New Year’s financial resolution.
Some common financial goals are to save more, spend less, put more money into your 401(k) or pay off debt. Maybe you want to become a better bargain hunter or start clipping coupons. Those are all great ideas, and I encourage you to do those things, but in the meantime, you need to get a handle on your current financial situation.
I suggest you resolve to create a budget this year. You can use Excel or a free program like Mint.com. Either way, keep track of everything you spend. A program like Mint will make this a little easier, but you may find that those Starbucks and drive-through bills are really taking a bite out of your paycheck when you add them all up.
Seeing exactly where your cash is going will definitely show you where the wasteful spending is–then you can decide where you’d rather put that found money.
If you’ve never created a budget, start now. You may be surprised at what you discover.
Personal Financial Resolutions of PF Bloggers
In 2012, I am working to increase my savings and minimize my expenses on my monthly purchases. While I have held this mindset to an extent in the past, I have not taken full advantage of some of the best strategies out there.
For example, while I often look for items that are on sale, I really want to try to take on more of an extreme couponing mentality through which I can combine sales with coupons.
I also want to break away from my “pay only with cash” mentality that I’ve held from a very young age. I’ve always viewed credit cards as a potential death knell, but if you can remain responsible and pay them off in full every month, the savings can be substantial.
For example, I recently applied for one of the best cash back credit cards (the Chase Freedom Card), and am currently getting 5% cash back on all of my gasoline purchases.
-Andrew, MoneyCrashers
My personal new years resolution is to focus all of my financial energy towards paying off our house early. After paying off over $40,000 of consumer debts, it is nice to be able to focus all of our efforts towards eliminating the mortgage. Not sure exactly when we will reach our goal, but that is what we are working towards in 2012.
-Bob Lotich, Christian PF
My financial resolution this year is kind of an anti-resolution!
It focuses on our business at Man Vs. Debt, where we’re taking a step back and focusing a bit less on numbers. We’ve definitely got some business goals–as I openly stated in the post Best of Man Vs. Debt 2011, generating $250,000 in revenue will support our team, pay our expenses and leave us some room to continue investing in future projects.
But the bottom line is, we spent 2011 (and spent a lot IN 2011) experimenting to find what worked best in everything from our technology to our workflow. Now, we’re ready to radically cut what doesn’t work, hit the ground running and start regularly producing and sharing great material through as many channels as possible.
And that’s our resolution–rather than shooting for a dollar figure or launching some cheap product every few months to bring in some quick cash, we will continue to provide top-quality information, much of it for free, to our community members.
And with that, we’ll continue to develop our premium products to be the best available resources there are to help people sell your crap, pay off your debt and do what you love… the heart of our message!
-Adam Baker, Man Vs. Debt
My New Year’s Financial Resolution is to simplify my financial picture as much as possible in an effort to spend less time managing my money. In order to incorporate all the automated bill payments, transfers etc, it does require having a bit more of cushion in non-interests bearing accounts but the minimal stress that simple finances bring will more than make up for the interests that I’m leaving on the table.
-David Ning, Moneyning
My new years financial resolution is to try harder to follow the budget that we’ve set up at our house. At the beginning of last year, we went over our budget categories after not keeping a close budget the previous year. We knew how much we wanted to spend in our categories, and it seemed like a good plan.
The problem was in the execution. We followed the new budget for a month or two, but after that we just winged it. Our spending in some categories was way more than it should have been. Other categories had been over-budgeted. We never really made adjustments.
-Peter, BibleMoneyMatters.com
Do you have any financial resolutions? What are you doing to accomplish them?
