The beginning of the year is one of the main times when people are motivated and looking to create new positive financial habits that will lead to a better financial life. If there were only a handful of financial habits for you to focus on developing this year, what would they be? What are those few things that you should focus your time on?
Habits
I Forgot
2 minute read
I completely forgot to write a blog post on Monday and I didn’t realize until Tuesday afternoon that I hadn’t posted anything about my blog earlier that morning, which is when I typically share. Once I realized that I hadn’t written and posted a blog I thought about it all day, but I just didn’t have any time at all to sit down and dedicate to getting it done. When I got home Tuesday evening I knew I wasn’t going to have time to get to it, so I just let it go. In the end, missing one blog post won’t have an impact on my life just like making one bad financial decision won’t ruin yours.
When you mess up your personal finances once it’s probably not going have a huge impact on your life (depending on what you do). However, once you realize that what you’ve done was wrong or stupid it could feel like the world’s coming down on you and you have no idea how you’re going to fix it. Don’t let one mistake ruin your outlook and push you into panic and misery. It’s okay to make mistakes.
Living a successful financial life isn’t about being perfect, it’s about being consistent and making progress. While missing blog posts regularly probably isn’t that serious, making poor financial decisions regularly could be. When you do blow through your budget or make a bad investment you can try to fix the situation, but don’t dwell on it and let it get you down. Doing so can lead to you giving up on trying to make wise financial decisions and only makes matters worse. Hindsight is 20/20.
Consistency Is Key
Spending over your budget or not meeting your savings target once is fine, but letting those things happen consistently can lead to big problems. This isn’t the kind of consistency that we’re looking for. The positive consistency in your financial life comes from developing positive financial habits that almost become second nature and allow you not have to think too much about what you’re doing with your money. Developing these habits can be done through creating a budget and tracking your expenses to become more aware of where your money is going, writing down your goals so that you actually know what you want your money to accomplish for you, and continuing to reevaluate where actions and your progress on a consistent basis.
On the other hand, if you’re the type of person who knows that you need someone else to keep you accountable, then working with a financial planner may be a good fit for you. Not only do they have the specialized knowledge about financial matters that you don’t have, but they can also act as a coach to you and a sounding board along the way.
It’s inevitable that you’ll make financial mistakes and that life will happen, which will lead to unplanned financial decisions. But that’s exactly why we go through the process of financial planning and making sure that you set yourself up with the proper controls such as an emergency fund and insurance coverages for when the time comes. While you can’t control when emergencies will surprise you, you can make sure that you change your actions and don’t let poor financial decisions continue to happen consistently.
Do yourself a favor; don’t dwell on your financial mistakes. Develop good financial habits that you can practice consistently.
