Resolutions

What is the best way to celebrate a New Year? Custom dictates that we should do something different, change a negative element, move toward a positive goal.

Have you made any resolutions?

I read on www.proactivechange.com/resolutions/statistics.htm “40 to 45% of American adult make one or more resolutions each year.
Among the top new years resolutions are resolutions about weight loss, exercise, and stopping to smoke. Also popular are resolutions dealing with better money management / debt reduction.
The following shows how many of these resolutions are maintained as time goes on:
- past the first week: 75%
- past 2 weeks: 71%
- after one month: 64%
- after 6 months: 46%
While a lot of people who make new years resolutions do break them, research shows that making resolutions is useful. People who explicitly make resolutions are 10 times more likely to attain their goals than people who don't explicitly make resolutions.”
So I am going to resolve to…

1. Get out of debt…. I have paid down a good chunk of my debt, but have a long road to be consumer debt free in 24 months. I need 24 months because I still have 22 car payments left. This will be a process of cutting down and cutting back, with an element of saying “No” tacked on for good measure.

2. Lose weight… I need to be at a healthy weight, and I am nowhere near this goal. I actually considered surgery, but I resolve that this needs to be all on me.

3. Exercise more… I walk around like an old lady, and that needs to end, regardless of what weight I am. Just Dance and my Wii Fit, along with my treadmill being dusted off and put back in use, are going to move me along till the warm weather comes back.

4. Support charities more…Working for a non-profit and taking a salary/hours cut in August after no raise the previous year may already count, but I am a big fan of doing something for those with less. Via two Christian charities, I sponsor a little boy in Guatemala, a little girl in El Salvador, and an elderly woman in Kenya. For 2011, I have also agreed to serve as a respite for two families that will be hosting a boy coming from Afghanistan with his translator. He needs treatment for burns he suffered about a year ago. It will be an interesting year, I am sure.

5. Spend more quality time with my children… This goes with the condition “provided they let me” as family time to a teenager can be seen as a punishment, defeating the whole purpose. I would love to have weekly family game night… Wish me luck…

6. Cook at home more often… AKA, eat out less. This will actually help me with resolutions #2 and #7.

7. Spend less and save more… I spend a boatload of money on crap…stuff I don’t need, spur of the moment “I want” stuff that I can totally live without. Stopping that will allow me to put together a real emergency fund. Last year I figured out that I should have almost $10,000 in emergency funds- a lofty goal, to be sure, but I figured I could do it over time… So far it has about $500 in it… I have a LONG way to go…

8. Lower my expenses… In 2010, I refinanced my house and eliminated 3 major credit card balances, so this process is well under way. I have a listing of my expenses…OUCH…and am chipping away at my remaining debt… That said, sometimes you need to spend money in order to save. My furnace and A/C unit need to be replaced. This year. Cash up front if at all possible…

9. Work on my retirement fund… I am moving from 5% to 10% on my 403(b) withholding. Cause I ain’t getting any younger. And I would like to retire at some point. Just saying.

10. Declutter my house… All the “stuff” I have and don’t need, want, wear needs to go to a new home. I have enough clothing living in my house to cloth a small nation and it needs to go… The papers that I have EVRYWHERE will either be shredded, sorted, filed or recycled…. And I made the HUGE step already in this area. I threw out hundreds of photos that were out of focus, poorly lit, included people whose names I can no longer remember, or were unflattering to the folks I love- Deirdre and Margie benefit the most, but Eddie was featured in more than one as well.

There you have it. A sizable list to be sure. Some will last more than a year, but hopefully there are a couple I will be able to knock out straight way. Wish me luck.

Happy New Year!