Every January, the world is all about starting fresh for the new year. Especially this year, I’ve found January to be quite a rollercoaster of a month. Between coming down off the craziness of the holidays and continuing to dodge the pandemic, I felt burnt out before the year even started. If you’re feeling like I am, you may have already waffled a bit on your New Year’s Resolutions. You know what? That’s okay. There’s still time to start fresh in February.

We All Mess Up

I can guarantee you that most, if not all, of us have dropped the ball on our New Year’s Resolutions at some point. Maybe your motivation ran out or life just sort of happened. At this point, it’s in the past. Putting blame on yourself for something that happened in the past won’t help. What will help is to learn from your past and use that to be successful when you pick that ball up again.

Building new habits, no matter if they’re related to finance, health or something else, is not about starting out doing them perfectly every single day. They’re about how many times you jump back into them after you slip up. If you let your budget go for one month, sure that stinks but it is not the end of the world. Yes, it can hurt your savings goals for the year. HOWEVER, even if you’ve missed one month that doesn’t mean to throw it all out the window because budgets just don’t work for you. One month out the window, might impact a short term goal. The whole year out the window, might impact your long term or retirement goals.

Make It Easy for Yourself

Take a look how you’re going about working on our new habits and see if there’s a way to make it even easier for yourself. The goal is to create your life in such a way that the habits you want to build are the easiest and best option.

Trying to cut down on your Uber spending and get more exercise? Is your destination reachable by walking or by bike? Set yourself up to be able to have the time not to rely on that Uber and it’ll be easier to reach your destination and get in a workout.

Trying to get your finances in order? Set them up in a way that makes saving easy and smoothes out the impact of unexpected bills. If you’re looking for specific direction on this front. Check out my financial coaching services. For a less hands on approach (that is also FREE), check out my Annual Review Financial Checklist. Follow this checklist and you’ll set your finances up in a way that works for you. Start fresh in February and use your money as a tool to build the life you deserve.