Making Financial Resolutions that Stick

Every year, I like to delude myself by making New Year's resolutions that involve eating healthier, exercising daily, and spending more time being active (outside of the daily exercise). These are important resolutions because, if left to my own devices, I would watch sci-fi movies and eat potato chips and French onion dip with a Ben and Jerry's chaser all day every day.

While these goals do help me make some changes in my overall eating and activity habits, they begin as the insane ramblings of a person who is completely out-of-touch with her true self. In the beginning, I resolve to exercise for 2 hours 5 days a week in order to train for a marathon, eat a completely organic raw or macrobiotic diet, and to spend my free time playing Frisbee, tennis, rugby and all manner of sports. By the second week of January I'm a little more active than I was the previous year, and I eat a tiny bit better--but I am no where near the goals I set for myself.

By now, you probably realize why I am not sticking to my goals. They are much too ambitious for lazy, chip eating, sci fi loving me. Your financial resolutions are no different from my fitness resolutions. If you make some that are too ambitious, you are setting yourself up for failure. And what happens once you realize that you have failed? You are disappointed in yourself, your confidence and self esteem plummet, you feel like none of your dreams are attainable since you couldn't stick with these resolutions and you end up making the same financial mistakes you were making the previous year.

So this year, I decided to make reasonable resolutions regarding my health and wellness so that I can actually stick to them and feel good about myself. Will you do the same for your finances?

-Instead of resolving to cut your spending on clothes, video games or gourmet coffee by 100%, you can resolve to cut that spending by a reasonable 30%.

-Instead of trying to increase your retirement savings contributions by 20% or 30%, maybe you can increase them just 15%.

-Instead of trying to do a complete overhaul of your finances, maybe you can pick just a few urgent areas to fix.

The goal here is not to let yourself off the hook completely and not to avoid making improvements you can actually afford to make--the key is to find those changes that you can make and expect yourself to make them on a reasonable level.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch Omega Man and eat some New York Super Fudge Chunk...while I still can.