• Lower your monthly payments
  • Reduce stress and live your life
  • Avoid personal bankruptcy court

Do Better than Resolutions: Create Habits

Sure, making resolutions for a new year are fun and all, but there’s more substantial work one could be doing to make big changes in their life. A lot of the reason we make bad decisions in all aspects of life is because we’ve formed habits that don’t serve us best. There are all kinds of things that we can do to create habits that will work best for us in the long run. You’ll be surprised at the goals you can achieve if you formulate a thorough plan and make sure you follow through and document your progresses.

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You always say it; you always spike yourself up to believe that you’ll tackle every goal on your list with no problems. How can you make anything happen if you don’t find ways to change your negative patterns of action. Making change is neither simple nor easy, but in most cases it will prove to be extremely beneficial. More than half of Americans don’t even bother making New Year’s resolutions, but the ones who do can hardly stay committed to their goals. The time right in the beginning of the year as things start to take shape–during the first two weeks–is the easiest time to stick to your commitments. After the initial shine of a new calendar year has worn off, people tend to fall off the bandwagon and forget the goals they set out to achieve. It takes at least two months for a person to begin to form new habits, so it makes sense that so many people can’t keep their new practices in check. If you really want to see what kind of results you can bring to fruition, don’t refer to them as resolutions: resign yourself to trying to create habits that can sustain your through life.

You’ll be surprised at your skill to create habits and you won’t believe the things you’re able to do.

“I Just Want To Save A Little More Money.”

The best way to create habits that serve your financial status is by thorough planning of all the dollars you bring in and send out. When you stay on top of your budget with a fine tooth comb, you won’t run into as many surprises as you might have in the past. Once you’ve got a very functional budget to work with, you can begin to formulate a plan to save more money. You don’t want to overdo the savings plan, but starting simply with reasonable goals will make it so that you don’t feel pressured or shamed if you absolutely can’t save more a little month.

Over time, if you’re serious about saving, you’ll be able to see that account continue to grow.

 

Are you hoping to move into a new home this year? Crunch the numbers and find out exactly how much that will cost and start guiding your savings plan in that direction. You want to break down every level of saving and spending there is to get the most accurate figures to work with. If you’re sure you’ll always have the money in your account, you can set up automatic deposits to your savings account that will make saving less of a hassle. Doing a lot of math to find out workable figures can be difficult and somewhat frightening, so being able to have an automatic way to save is a bit of a relief. Increasing your spending by even a hair will add up in the long run.

When you create habits that force you to save, you will be very happy when you go to your savings account for an emergency expense.

“If Only I Could Save a Bit of My Raise…”

When you have to start living on a tighter budget, it can be very difficult to actually go through with it. Saving feels bad in the moment because you have to eat out less, you can’t shop as much and you can’t have the extra little things you like as much as you used to. That’s why getting a raise or bonus is always a wonderful time to save some that you weren’t going to spend anyway. If you didn’t have a bonus or a raise, you wouldn’t have the extra to do extra with. If you get a bonus every year at a certain time, it’s probably in your best interest to save it all. You’ll feel better about saving it if you’ve got a long-term or even a short-term goal coming up: it could help you get it done! If you must, you can take a small portion from your bonus to play around with!

When you create habits that feel like a stress-free necessity, you don’t feel like you’re losing as much and it becomes easier to be appreciative of your progress. Create habits that are both realistic and purposeful to get to your goals even faster.