You made it past “Quitters Day.” Now what?

Did you know “Quitters Day” came and went? In fact, you may have been one of the people it was meant for – and we say that in a good way.

What’s Quitter’s Day?

The second Friday of every January marks the informal milestone for either having kept your New Year’s resolutions or having quit them. Congrats if your still chugging along with your goal. But it’s also understandable if you’re not (survey findings show it’s the case for many of us). 

In fact, don’t see it as a failure. It’s actually an opportunity that can have a big impact on your future. You’ve entered the perfect time to learn four lessons to help make goals stick.

Let’s talk about financial goals, specifically.

Setting financial goals that stick

One of the reasons that we don’t keep our resolutions is that we turn them into stratospheric goals that we expect to achieve in a short amount of time. Like becoming a full-blown body builder in a year when you’ve never lifted weights. This just sets us up for frustration and burn out.

We should all aim high, but goals need to be realistic. Financial goals are no different. If you’re earning $100,000 a year and you want to build an emergency fund of $50,000 from scratch within a year, it’s highly unlikely that’s going to happen, especially given the cost of living. But, $5,000 to $10,000? Now we’re talking.

1. Define Clear and Achievable Goals

The example above shows us that it’s important to set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely (SMART) financial goals. SMART goals are effective because they’re clear, realistic and they can be easily tracked.

If you’re trying to save more in your 401(k), then commit to a specific amount, like $300 more per pay period. (By the way, many 401k platforms offer to automatically increase your contributions annually, so you can do that too).

If you want to spend less and boost your annual savings, put a specific number toward both. But you also need to map out the things you want to spend less on that will add up to the annual savings figure. Simply telling yourself that you want to save $5,000 this year won’t cut it.

2. Break down goals into manageable steps

Staying with the annual savings goal: Work out how much you need to save on average each week, so you achieve your annual savings. To have $5,000 in your account by year’s end, you need to save, on average, about $96 a week.

Use a spreadsheet to create a monthly road map of weekly expenses. This way, you can achieve small steps along the way that are attainable. Achievable steps may include buying the generic brands for select items at the supermarket and cancelling the streaming services and/or recurring subscriptions you can live without.

Tracking your progress is crucial. If you don’t like to use spreadsheets on your personal computer, you can hand write a road map in a weekly journal. Journaling has been around for so long because it’s effective! The point is, do what works for you, but do it.

3. Celebrate milestones, seek support and accountability

The reason you need to track your progress is that you need to have something that holds you accountable. Numbers don’t lie. You need to know where you stand.

If you’re worried about holding yourself accountable, perhaps turn your financial goal into a challenge you can do with a friend, who shares the same or similar goal.

That way you can celebrate achieving milestones on the journey together. We all need encouragement. Certainly celebrate the halfway mark but if you stayed on track all month, consider celebrating that as well. It’s an achievement. Be sure to congratulate yourself in some way if you’re doing it on your own.

4. Speak to a financial planner to keep the momentum going

Perhaps the biggest help in staying accountable and receiving the right encouragement can come from a financial planner. Keeping people on track with their financial goals is one of the things that planners aim to do best. A planner can help you come up with SMART goals for your finances as well as roadmaps to help achieve them.

Make Quitter’s Day a financial opportunity.