4 Top Reasons Why Your Financial Resolutions Don’t Work
Do you feel apprehensive every time you think about your financial resolutions? Do you spend sleepless nights, thinking about mortgages and debt? Does financial guilt rest heavily on your shoulders? Does sticking to your financial resolutions make you feel like a rookie Ninja warrior?
For most people, making their financial resolutions work for them is like riding an emotional roller coaster ride. Here are the 4 top reasons why your financial resolutions don’t work and how you can make them work for you:
Your financial goals lack action plans:
Resolutions—both financial and otherwise begin to lose steam in the initial stages, if not backed by a proper action plan. Hence, if you have resolved to cut down your expenditure in 2016, outline the areas where you are going to spend less. Use a worksheet to track your expenditures or better still an App like Money View. Make a small beginnings. Ask yourself if you can replace the weekly dinner at the expensive Italian restaurant with a more fulfilling activity such as spending a fun-filled evening with your family playing games.
Your financial resolutions make you unhappy
Recently, a hilarious app by the name, “Be like Bill” had become viral on Facebook. The app generates customized versions of yourself which start with, ‘This is Paul. Paul does not go to Starbucks to click selfies.” and after a few funny lines ends with, “Be like Paul.”
Did you resolve to surrender your cable subscription or give up your favorite espresso just Bill and Paul did so? Are your financial resolutions subconsciously mimicking others? If yes, they would never reap benefits after the initial few days. Let your financial resolutions, whether it be moving to a less expensive neighborhood or gathering courage to ask for a raise, be about your happiness and your financial freedom.
You are lonely in your financial resolutions
People , who often dare to dream different are seen as misfits— as square pegs in round holes. Their journey is often an arduous, lonely one. Imagine resolving to take your newly founded business to new heights and being surrounded by people, who think that giving up your day job was the worst idea in the first place. Surround yourself with people who have faith in your financial goals. Build support systems around you. Motivate yourself constantly.
Your Financial Resolutions Lack Vision
A resolution that exists only in the mind of the resolution keeper hardly sees the light of the day. Provide more visibility to your dream, by sharing them with likeminded friends and relatives. Share it on social media, make a blog post if possible. Let your co-motivators know that you are saving for your dream vacation.
The dynamic Suze Orman, who had been the financial advisor for Merrill Lynch and who later founded the Suze Orman Financial Group, with her characteristic candor once said , “In all realms of life it takes courage to stretch your limits, express your power, and fulfill your potential… it’s not different in the financial realm.”
Stretch your limits and embrace your financial freedom. It will fill you with immense power. If you haven’t made a beginning, make one today and tell us about your journey.
Sridevi Datta is a Cost Accountant. After working as a Business-SME in a leading E-learning centre, she now blogs regularly at The Write Journey.