Happy New Year from Foresters!

Have you made New Year’s resolutions this year? Check out our tips for sticking to your guns and having a successful 2017.

New Year’s resolutions

Making New Year’s resolutions is a tradition that extends back to the ancient Romans and Babylonians. Our ancestors would promise to return borrowed items or to pray to the gods more fervently. When taking a break from spreading Christianity, medieval knights would perform a ‘peacock vow’ after Christmas every year. This involved a group of knights placing their hands over a cooked or live peacock and vowing to uphold the tenets of chivalry for another 12 months.

However, just as knights would abandon chivalry in favour of violence and greed, we abandon our resolutions as easily. According to studies, only 8% of resolutions made this year will be successful. Of those that last through January, 46% won’t last the whole 12 months.

Every January, gyms and churches bristle with people working off the spiritual and physical weight that is end-of-year guilt. January’s sales of alcohol, tobacco and gambling products drop to their lowest of the year as people attempt to live healthily while lining their pockets. In fact, money-related resolutions make up nearly 40% of all promises made for the New Year. The sad thing is, all these trends revert back to their normal levels by February.

We are only human. We are easily tempted. Routine and habits are comfortable. We work hard and expect to be rewarded. This makes giving up our creature comforts a very difficult task to maintain.

However, all hope is not lost.

Set your goals

As a financial services company, we want to help focus on your financial goals. The easiest goal to achieve is the one you need to tick off. Do you need a new car for work? Do the kids need new laptops for school? Sort out your needs from your wants and save for the needs first. Whatever your goal is, your resolution needs to be quantifiable and achievable.

Take steps to improve your financial literacy this year. Consider it a detox, an overhaul of your financial health. Learn how to budget, save, manage credit and invest. Learn about the traps and pitfalls of finance. Know the law and your rights within it. Fill in the gaps of your knowledge. In the coming months you can check back here for ways to improve your financial literacy in an easy-to-read, digestible and interesting format.

Make it easy on yourself

Just because it’s a New Years resolution, doesn’t mean it has to have to be a full year of giving something up. Give yourself manageable increments – aim for two months. It typically takes 7 weeks to build a good habit that will last.

If you are overweight, you don’t need washboard abs by next Christmas. If you are a gossip, you don’t need to take a vow of silence atop Mount Sinai. New Year’s resolutions fail because we expect too much of ourselves. Take baby steps first.

Get a buddy on board

You don’t have to go it alone! There are people around you that want to succeed. Find your buddy and make a pact to achieve something together. If you are losing weight, pick a measurable goal to hit in two weeks. You and your spouse can pool your financial resources to make your saving outcome much stronger than if you did it alone.

We wish you all the best for 2017. We all deserve a break from the surreal year that was 2016. Take the new year to find some order in the chaos. Set your goals and figure out the best way to achieve them. Remember, it doesn’t have to be a whole year of sacrifice. Take it one or two months at a time. Consistently reevaluate how you are progressing. Change things that aren’t working. Get a buddy on board to help you across the line.

Best of luck!

– Rory Callaghan