Make Your (Financial) New Year’s Resolutions

Three tips to help with 2024

Coauthored with Allie Grill and originally published in The Daily Item on December 31, 2023

A new year is just around the corner and with that may come the desire to create some resolutions. Your goals may include personal development, health, or relationships, but why not consider financial wellness a goal? A recent poll found that about three quarters of working adults are stressed about their personal financial situation. 2024 can be the year that you finally get your finances into better shape. A few simple actions could improve your personal finances, stress levels, and life satisfaction.

Before thinking about what to do to improve finances, it is important to be realistic and thoughtful with new goals. Americans are notorious for making resolutions but not keeping them.  A recent article showed only 9% of Americans complete their resolutions. One reason why resolutions are difficult to keep is because they can be overly ambitious and difficult to maintain overtime. To combat this, in this article we provide three manageable tips that will require a small investment of time in the new year with a big (cumulative) payoff.

First, manage your recurring subscriptions and payments. Do you use Hulu, Netflix, SiriusXM, Amazon Prime, Cable TV, Internet? Do you pay a monthly fee for certain goods and services such as vitamins, supplements, gym/fitness apps, meal delivery, beauty products, or magazine and books subscriptions? When you add up your monthly subscriptions, you may be surprised and how much you are devoting to subscriptions, perhaps ones that you do not use often enough to justify the expense.

It is important to go through your credit card and banking statements to record them all so that you have a realistic account of your spending. Additionally, if there are multiple members in your household, it would be beneficial to review with your housemates as members of your household may also be paying for similar services. We understand that these subscriptions provide important services and entertainment, so we don’t recommend cancelling them all. We do, however, recommend that you consider the value you get from each and cancel subscriptions that you no longer use or that you no longer use as much. While $15 a month is not a huge expense, by cancelling you can be almost $200 richer at year end. A few small changes could total $1,000 or more by the end of 2024.

Second, gain an understanding of your monthly income and expenses by creating a budget. A budget can help you understand where are spending your income and whether you are living above your means. One example you could look towards is the amount per month you spend on groceries versus dining out. Are you happy with this spending? If not, you could create a budget to encourage you to reduce your expenditure at restaurants so that you have more wiggle room for discretionary spending. There are many budgeting tools available, or you can create your own through software like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.

Finally, what are your goals for 2024 and beyond? And how can a stronger financial plan help you reach them? Now that you are familiar with your income and expenses and have a sense of your budget for discretionary spending, you can determine where you would like to allocate any extra funds. Have you considered creating a savings habit? Would you like to start participating in charitable giving? Pay off high interest debt? Open a Roth IRA or 529 Plan for your child’s college education? Think about what is most important for you this year and set a goal as your budget allows. We recommend creating automatic methods to make this happen, whether it’s a monthly auto-draft of funds into your savings account, or automatic reoccurring contributions to your retirement account. These habits are ones that you can outsource by letting technology take the lead.

A new year and fresh start can be exciting. While budgeting conversations aren’t quite as exciting, a less-stressful life because of better finances is a wonderful goal. With these Financial New Year Resolutions, you can have better finances in 2024 and beyond.

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Allie Grill is Director of the Career Development Center and Matthew Rousu is Dean of the Sigmund Weis School of Business at Susquehanna University