5 Money Resolutions that REALLY Work from Ashford Marketing on Vimeo.
Happy New Year! If you’re like many, you’ve set some personal and professional goals for 2019. On the personal side, you might be planning to live a healthier lifestyle, spend more time with family, or take up a new hobby. Some may be including goals for paying down debt and increasing savings. With that in mind, I thought I would share a couple of financial New Year’s resolutions with you that might help you be more efficient in the way that you save and spend in 2019.
5 Money Resolutions for the New Year:
- Take an inventory of your monthly cash flow. If you are anything like my family, as the year goes on you tend to add expenses, subtract expenses, and you never know how it’s going to impact your monthly cash flow. If you haven’t taken an inventory on what’s going into your household checking account and what’s flowing out each month, take time to do it. I don’t like the word budget, but I do think it’s important to understand what your monthly burn rate truly is.
- Take an inventory of your assets. On a rainy Saturday or Sunday afternoon, grab your phone and record the contents of each room in your home. When you do, narrate what the items are so that if something were to ever happen to any of them, for instance a house fire, you can easily get them replaced.
- Look at the amount of money that you’re saving each year. Figure out how you can potentially save 1% or 2% extra each month or over the course of 2019. That incremental saving is going to have a gigantic impact on your overall ability to build wealth. Try to find that 1%, 2% or maybe even 3 % that you know if you didn’t have it, you wouldn’t miss it. Maybe it’s a Starbucks here or an extra drink with friends there. You’ll have to determine what that is, but I think if you challenge yourself, you could probably save at least 1%-3% over the course of a year, and you really wouldn’t even notice.
- Check your credit report. This isn’t a difficult task, but it’s something we forget to do. You never know what’s on your credit report until you check it. There are multiple free services that you can use, and you can pull your credit once a year for free.
- BYOB – Bring your own Bottle: This is one of my favorite tips. If you enjoy going out to dinner and drinking wine, do yourself a favor, call the restaurant and find out about a cork-fee. Some restaurants will allow you to bring one bottle for free or maybe charge a $15-$20 cork-fee if you bring your own bottle. Now, if you were to spend the same amount of money on the same bottle of wine at the restaurant as opposed to purchasing it ahead of time, I am willing to bet you might be able to save some dollars.
Those are just a few helpful hints as you finalize and implement your New Year’s financial resolutions. Hope you have a happy 2019!