Want to get better with money? There are better ways than the New Year’s resolution

The start of a new year is always brimming with promise – of what we’ll do differently, what we’ll do right, what we’ll achieve.

Social media, especially, can be exhausting at this time of year with many people making grand declarations and sharing so many ‘best ways’ to have a new you for the new year.

Many of us will have decided that 2025 is the year we will sort our money out. This is the year. We’ve got a firm list of goals. We’re cutting out the online sale hauls and the ‘happy payday’ card taps, we’re setting lofty savings targets, and we’re paying off that credit card that’s had a $3000 balance lurking for years like an ex in our Instagram stories.

The fact that historically we haven’t done this successfully for one single year previously? Irrelevant. The mirage of January 1 calls to us. We convince ourselves that because we are starting again, things will be different.

However, life is not a game of Pictionary, where every round starts as a blank page, the previous round’s attempt scrunched up and never to be spoken about again. It’s more like the Game of Life board game. While you can have a strategy and play to the best of your ability, you’re still at the mercy of a poor dice roll, pulling an unlucky card, or sometimes just making a bad decision. That’s the Game of Life, and real life.

So while we create firm, dramatic resolutions as the new year rolls around, most of us will probably wake up on the first morning of 2025 feeling tired, a bit uninspired, and not ready to be a changed person overnight. It’s very easy to set ourselves up for disappointment when we create resolutions.

But what about if we took a different approach? If your money in 2025 becomes the beginning of a long European holiday, rather than a battle of the wills between who you are and the ‘money-sorted-out’ person you want to be.

What do we do before a long trip? We plan, and we pack. And that’s why I do two things when I’m coming into the new year.

Plan first and delay any changes until February

Firstly, I plan, which means I don’t start any kind of change until February. Here’s why.

Chances are, as we wind down for the year, we’re exhausted. We’re probably experiencing some disappointment around all the things we didn’t get done this year, and how next year we’ll just have to try harder.

Then all of a sudden we find ourselves rushing the decision of what we want out of the next year into a few days break from work over the holidays, and grab for resolutions or commitments ‘that will do’ rather than any thoughtful personalised purpose.

It’s too easy to slip our skin over other people’s goals in the hope it will slip us out of our own lives and let us avoid taking ownership over what we actually want for ourselves.

A few years ago, after yet another year of doing this to myself, I decided to just give myself more time to reflect and plan, and stop forcing myself to try and fit success into the 12 pages of the Australian Firefighters Charity Calendar.

This meant slowing down, teasing out what I wanted out of the year ahead, and aiming to start on February 1. I felt so much better for it, and I’ve approached it the same way ever since. If I happen to start a few days before February, then I am ahead… rather than starting mid-January and thinking I am ‘behind’.

Have a ‘no-resolution’ policy

Secondly, I have a strict no-resolution policy. Instead, I pack my ‘new year bag’ for my trip through 2025 with a few goals and some guiding principles. I’ve found both of these to be great alternatives to resolutions.

Goal setting is a great way of having firm aims for the year, without going as far as the ‘hold on for as long as possible’ resolution approach. Some people like to have just a couple of goals, some people like to spread goals out over a few different categories. It’s completely customisable.

When it comes to money, these goals might be something like ‘save $2000 between February 1 and December 1 for holiday season’, or ‘pay down my $4500 credit card in 18 months through leaving the card at home and paying an extra $65 a week through either my wages, overtime, or selling stuff around the house’.

Try goal stacking

You can also ‘stack’ your goals. Rather than setting every goal as something you have to strive for, where you’ll be pushing outside of your comfort zone, set yourself a combination of goals – some that are easy (for momentum), some a slight stretch (for reward) and some hard (for a challenge).

An example could be ‘find out what super fund I’m with’ (easy), ‘read a book about understanding my relationship with money’ (slight stretch), and ‘implement two ideas from the money book’ (challenge).

Have guiding aims

The other method is to have guiding aims. A guiding aim is where you make a ‘do less’ or ‘reduce’ goal to more measurable. Instead of saying ‘I’ll spend less’, you shape it to ‘I’ll eat out less than 6 times per month’, or ‘I’ll buy less than 12 new items of clothing for the year’. It could be ‘I’ll read, watch or listen to something that teaches me about money once a week’.

While a guiding aim is similar to a goal, it is reflective rather than restrictive. It’s a nice balance between an ‘all or nothing’ approach, while still having some accountability. It allows us to be guided rather than stopped. They are also more flexible – if you don’t quite meet your guiding aim, or need to change it, it doesn’t have the same mental disappointment of not reaching a goal. You can have them instead of goals, or as well as goals.

Set yourself up for success

Your current relationship with money didn’t develop in one year, so we can’t expect ourselves to heal it in one year, which we often trick ourselves into thinking can be done through just the right New Year’s resolution. However, we can set ourselves up to improve it through goals and guidance.

However, you decide to approach the new year, remember that life is not a pass or fail exercise and your new year shouldn’t be either.