How To Create A Better Personal Finance Strategy This Year

I’ve been there myself, so I know where you’re coming from.

It feels like no matter how much we plan there is never enough time or money to do all the things we want to do.

Sometimes this means that our priorities will fall down the drain and we’ll wind up in over our heads…again.

So now is the time to quickly start your personal finance planning so you can create a better personal finance strategy.

With the following personal finance tips you will be able to start on your journey to gain control over your finances.

You’ll start to be a True Money Manager.

While this personal finance advice might not be for everyone, these personal finance tips will help you prioritize your spending and saving.

Espeically if you’re wanting to create a personal finance strategy so can reach your financial goals, then you’re in the right place!

Schedule When To Work On Your Finances

Before the start of your week, sit down and create a plan for the week ahead to work on your personal finance strategy. It doesn’t matter if you do this Monday morning or Sunday after the kids have gone to bed.

The goal here is to do it before your week has started. Before you’re spending money you don’t know you don’t have.

When you sit down to work on your financial goals, you’ll be able to map out what you need to do to work on them and start your week off with the right frame of mine.

After keeping the “apointment” with yourself for a few weeks it will become second nature and then you’ll feel like you are missing something when you don’t do it. That’s a good feeling you want to have because that means you’re successfully training yourself to automatically pay attention to your finances and KEEP paying attention to them each week.

Whatever your financial goals are, set aside time each week to work on them.

Divide And Conquer

The first thing I do in order to successfully work towards my financial goals is to set a few super large, seemingly unattainable goals. Next I give each goal a number. Then I break it down into smaller monthly goals so I’ll know as the year starts to go on whether or not I’m on track for my annual goal.

Your personal finance strategy might look different than mine, but here are some of my financial goals right now:

Save money for:

• My daughter’s wedding
• The dryer that’s about to die
• New kitchen countertops & backsplash

After you’ve figured out the yearly and monthly amounts you need, it’s best to set a weekly goal to attain too. That way, when you are reviewing your finances each week, you’ll be able to make sure you’re on track to REACH those BIG goals before it is too late.

Our financial goals are typically the ones we wait to do at the last minute, reviewing them weekly instead of putting these until the end of the year.

Prioritize

The hardest part of creating a personal finance strategy is prioritizing them.

When it comes to your week, you need to decide which things on your list you need to do and which ones you want to do. My personal finance planning advice is that when you have an essential task with a deadline, it naturally becomes your top priority.

But what do you do when everything feels so important? You have to think rationally about the order you are going to need them.

Saving money for my new kitchen counters isn’t as important as the new dryer, because the dryer is going to go out at any moment.

That means my first priority is saving as quickly as possible for our new dryer.

Of course I do not want to put off saving money for my daughter’s upcoming wedding because there will always be emergencies that will pop up to use up what money I have saved. I don’t want to wait to start saving for that or I will end up having to put the wedding on credit – and that’s a no-no in my book.

As you prioritize how to attain your financial goals, ask yourself if you need to do it at the beginning or end of the week? Which one is an immediate goal? How long do you think it will take to attain it?

Set A Time For Completion

When you write down these financial priorities on your list for your personal finance strategy, make sure to include how long it will take to do these financial goals.

If it’s not something with a set time restraint, then the priority and importance of it may be pushed to the back burner.

It doesn’t matter if it’s something like saving for a wedding, a new dryer or something simple like setting aside a certain dollar amount for Christmas, you need to give each goal a set time of completion.

If you don’t, your finances and schedule can get messed up, and you won’t be able to get everything saved for by the time you need it.

For years every November I would get all bent out of shape because Christmas was right around the corner and we didn’t have any money saved up. That’s how I originally developed my JumpStart Your Savings Program to save $500 in 30 days.

But the BETTER thing to do, was to set a Christmas Goal at the beginning of the year, with a deadline of November 15th so that I’d have money to spend during the Black Friday sales.

It’s not like I didn’t realize that every year Christmas was coming on the same December 25th as the prior year. But things constantly popped up using our money. It wasn’t until I broke down our goal amount and then set the sooner deadline of mid-November AND had weekly check ups on how that balance was growing, that we could finally successfully manage our finances.

Do Regular Check-ins

Don’t just wait until Sunday to realize you forgot to do something for your personal finance strategy. Check in with yourself regularly to make sure you’re staying on top of your goals and personal finance planning.

To state the obvious because sometimes we forget: if your schedule isn’t working, feel free to change it to make it more realistic.

However, if you are just lazy, find out what it will take to get your butt up and do those goals. Don’t wait until the end of the week to fix your problems, fix them now!

When it comes to your weekly goals, they should all lead back to your big yearly goals on your personal finance strategy.

If they don’t, you may need to rethink your weekly and even monthly goals to make sure you can reach them.

If you follow these personal finance tips to plan your goals, you can achieve any financial goal you set for yourself, and you might surprise yourself by how much you can accomplish.

Today is the best time to start your personal finance planning so you can create a better personal finance strategy and potentially change the trajectory of your year.

It’s time to start to gain control over your finances and your saving.

Prioritize your spending and saving and create a better financial future for your family as soon as possible.

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