Watching Your Wallet: Financial Resolutions

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - New research states New Year’s resolutions last only about 32 days.

If you made some financial resolutions that are now a distant memory, here are some tips to reset those goals.

Resolutions are tough to keep. You make them with the right intentions but you sometimes just don’t make them the right way.

If you made New Year’s resolutions about your money, how is that going? Are you saving more? Are you spending less? If you haven’t been able to keep those resolutions again, try being a little more specific.

Don’t just say you want to save more. tag that resolution to something specific. If you want to take a trip this year, create a spreadsheet with your dollar amount goal at the top and then add savings amounts underneath to show you how you’re doing.

It’s better to see incremental progress instead of just a broad goal of “saving money” floating around in your head.

Have a goal to contribute more to your retirement? Hopefully, you’ve worked this out with a certified financial advisor, but check to see how you’re doing periodically.

Just looking at the end of the year can be overwhelming and too uninvolved. You may not make changes to your retirement plan during the year, but you can at least speak with a financial advisor to make sure you’re doing everything you can to reach that goal.

Now, if your goal is to get out of debt, set up automatic payments to those charge cards that are larger than the monthly minimum payment. That’s another way to set resolutions and keep them.

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