A few years ago I tried a new strategy for New Year’s Resolutions and I have decided that I like it a lot better and I feel the success rate would be higher. The strategy is a simple one, instead of having big goals that you’ll likely forget come February 1st, you make a small attainable goal on January 1st and work to achieve that goal then hopefully come February 1 you have succeeded on this first goal and you can make a second goal or be reminded that you wanted to complete the first thing and can try to do that again. This way the resolutions don’t have to be as large and life changing but come December 31, 2012 you can look back and say I completed these things each month that I set out to do.
As for my resolutions, I have two that are monthly tasks and two that are related and are my goal for January (and will also help with the monthly tasks).
I want to save money this year. My goal is to spend less money than what I earn each month. I already keep track of my earnings and expenses by month but now I want to make sure that each month is a positive month. I was looking at last year’s expenses and I had 4 months that I ran a deficit for the month (two I was able to explain with my car downpayment and a trip to Australia) but the other two were months that I just spent freely. I want to work towards not having any deficit months in 2012.
I want to try a new thing each month. This is something that I think should be easy because I’ve made the rules with a lot of slack room. I’ve decided that trying to make a new dinner counts, as does trying a new restaurant. But to make the resolution worthwhile I’ve also made this one more difficult in that during a month if I succeed in doing something new on the 5th of the month then I have to come up with another thing to do. Some of the things I have in mind are to make a table, paint a picture, do a Tough Mudder race, attend some plays/musicals/symphonies/concerts, etc.
My January Resolutions are to make a plan of dinners. This will allow me to do multiple things for my big monthly goals: it will help me save money by eating out less and it allows me to try making new, different and interesting meals. It will also help me with my second resolution which is to bring my lunch to work. I am hoping I will have leftovers from making dinner and can bring them to work some days. This is another way that will help save money and cut down on expenses.
