How to achieve your financial New Year wishes

There is a very simple way to know when a person is Venezuelan at a party on December 31, surely you will see him with 12 grapes and now of ringing the bells welcoming the new year you will see that he will try to eat one grape per second, thinking about what your wishes are for next year and representing each grape a wish, to later continue the celebration.

But without losing this beautiful tradition, which I, as a Venezuelan, apply, we can ask ourselves: Will that be the best way to structure your financial desires for next year?

According to the different specialists in psychology and human behavior, we have 3 important opportunities for improvement in the way many of us make our New Year’s goals:

1.- He who covers a lot of little squeezes

As we saw previously, if for each grape you made a wish, you have at least 12 different dreams to achieve, which is extremely complex and involves a great effort for our brain, so we suggest you focus on a single goal. For example: This year you can eat the 12 grapes, but focusing on achieving that single goal, this does not imply that you do not have more goals, but rather that you prioritize which is the most important and then that you achieve it the first one, move on to the next, because very Contrary to what we think, not only on December 31 you can set a personal or family goal.

2.- A plan without a goal is simply a dream

Many of us say this year I want to earn more money or I wish not to have debts, but unfortunately these very general wishes are simply that a wish, so you must first divide that goal into parts and make each part measurable and controllable, for example, if You thought you want to save, bring that dream to your goal, saying for the last of each month I want to save the amount of $ 100 or $ 1,000 or the amount that you have established. In this way, you will see that it is much easier to eat the elephant with one bite at a time, than instead to say that for this year you want to save about $ 12,000 and when you reach the end of the year and you have not achieved it, simply say well I leave it for other year.

Statistics show us that 80% of people at the beginning of February already indicate that they will not achieve their goals and only 8% of people maintain their goals for the whole year, with what we see that for every 100 people who set a goal only 8 will continue to fight for them during the year.

3.- What is not measured is not controlled and if it is not controlled it is not improved

Continuing with our beautiful tradition of grapes, many of us at the end of the New Year’s party do not even remember what wish number 6 or 9 was, I have seen that some people carry a piece of paper and there they write down their wishes and read them while they eat each grape fiercely and the people who end up hugging those who are still trying to think about their wishes, but I have never seen some of those people grab onto that paper with their wishes and keep it and measure how they are going every month with their goals and whether or not they advanced and how much they may be missing.

Many specialists suggest that you should rather put this goal in a place where you can see it every day and remind yourself each day of the actions you must follow to continue to get closer to the monthly value that you set for yourself.

So, if we had to do a process of improvement or better said of optimization of our tradition, we would say that the steps in summary would be the following:

1. Do not ask for 12 different wishes, prioritize the one that is most important to you and repeat it 12 times saying, for example, for January I want to have $ 100 saved, for February $ 200, for March $ 300 and go like this until December with each grape.
2.  Do not leave your goals written down in your mind but put them down on paper or use an application that can help you keep track of this month by month.
3. 3. If you do not achieve the goal of a month, do not abandon them, but keep going until you achieve it and if you see that the load is too heavy, no one will scold you for changing your goal and say I can save $ 50 per month in the first trimester and go up to $ 100 per month for the second trimester and go gradually.
4.  Establish an action plan to achieve these goals, remember that just because you ask the universe on such a special day as the New Year, it does not mean that it will be fulfilled, we have already seen that in most of the cases is not met.

The two goals that most people ask for on December 31 are to exercise more to improve my health and lose weight, which is why in January most gyms start their advertising campaigns knowing that many want to improve their physique. But as with your financial goals for the month of February or March, people left the gym or simply their brain knows that it is better to think about other things and put that dream aside thinking that there is always time, but life goes going.

So when one sees in the gyms who are the people who in general manage to continue exercising, they are those who either have a very great willpower and can do it alone or those who rather know that there is no problem in asking for help and have a Personal trainer, who calls them every day to go to the gym, they make an exercise plan and continuously measure their progress, as well as suggesting the necessary corrective actions to achieve the goal set.

In the same way it happens in the world of your personal finances you do not have to do it alone, it is there where a Certified Financial Planner (CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER ™), will help you paint and specify those goals that you want to achieve so much, establishing an action plan that takes you to the path you require and supporting you in measuring and controlling them, as well as taking corrective measures when necessary.

A very Happy New Year to all of you and we hope that now you can achieve your New Year’s financial goals.