{"id":167975,"date":"2014-01-14T04:00:29","date_gmt":"2014-01-14T11:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getrichslowly.org\/blog\/?p=167975"},"modified":"2023-10-26T11:13:08","modified_gmt":"2023-10-26T17:13:08","slug":"8-hacks-to-help-you-keep-your-resolutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/8-hacks-to-help-you-keep-your-resolutions\/","title":{"rendered":"8 hacks to help you keep your resolutions"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was in the first stage of personal finance<\/a>, I had two obvious goals:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Pay off my credit card<\/li>\n
  2. Save $10,000 for an emergency fund<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    It was by no means easy. But, I had a plan, and I hit my goal, and it felt so great. And then I set another goal: automatic deposits into a Roth IRA. And I did that too, gaining more confidence and momentum. Step aside Katniss, I was a girl on fire.<\/p>\n

    But after awhile, the next steps became a little unclear. Was I supposed to learn more about investing? Should I look for ways to save more, or create additional income streams? I wasn’t sure. And since I had a lot of my savings on autopilot, I just let it ride. I didn’t set new goals. I wasn’t exactly irresponsible. I had a healthy savings account. I wasn’t making bad choices anymore.<\/p>\n

    But then I started getting lazy about other money habits too. I wasn’t checking my bank statements every month, and sometimes I’d find an error from three months prior. I didn’t draw up a detailed budget for our home renovation projects, which cost more than I’d anticipated.<\/p>\n

    I recently realized that I haven’t set a personal finance goal in almost two years.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    And it’s not because I don’t need to! In fact, after buying a house in January, I really would like a bigger emergency fund — since houses have water heaters that break and old garage door openers that randomly decide to open, sometimes while you’re not home. (Luckily, we had a home warranty that the seller paid for, so these issues were covered.)<\/p>\n

    So basically, my lax money habits have gotta change. And because it’s the time of year when we all swear to save more money and lose 10 pounds and write that novel and save the dolphins, I’ve rounded up my top favorite methods for setting a goal and actually reaching it.<\/p>\n

    <\/span>1. For all goals: Go specific or go home<\/span><\/h2>\n

    Let’s take the “save more money” goal. What does that even mean? Save $5 more than you did last year? If you don’t get specific about a goal, you may as well forget the whole thing. As they say, obtainable goals are S.M.A.R.T.: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.<\/p>\n

    Actually, the Internet disagrees about what each letter of the acronym stands for, but that’s not important here. What is important is that your goal to “save more money” morphs into something like “automatically deposit $100 more into my emergency fund each month for the next 12 months” — and that you write it down.<\/p>\n

    <\/span>2. Also for all goals: Make failure an option<\/span><\/h2>\n

    I recently joined a course called The Finisher’s Formula, led by Ramit Sethi<\/a> of I Will Teach You To Be Rich<\/a>. (Side note for the skeptical: I’ve done a couple of Ramit’s courses, but I’m not paid in any way to write about them, not in discounts or early access, and he’s never slipped me a Benjamin — pinkie swear. I’m just a fan.)<\/p>\n

    Anyway, Ramit says one of his best strategies for achieving goals is to plan for failure. “The fact is, you will fail,” says Ramit. “It will happen sometimes. The key is not to try to avoid failure all the time. It’s to actually build in a process to handle that inevitable failure.”<\/p>\n

    In other words, when you don’t<\/em> plan for failure, you have one setback and give up, which looks a lot like this.<\/p>\n