Do you ever go to bed at night worrying about money?  If you’re anything like my wife then some of those worries can keep you tossing and turning all night long. 

The simple answer to get rid of those worries is to tackle whatever concern is nagging at the back of your mind.  Unfortunately, life’s not always that simple.  Whether it’s work, family, school, or other responsibilities – life is busy and it’s tough to make time to get things done.

Running the Rat Race

I know before we had kids, I worked long hours at my job while going back to school for a Master’s degree.  Then we started a family and I launched this site and I haven’t slept a full 8 hours since : )

I’m sure you could share many similar stories, there’s never enough time in the day to get everything done that you’d like. The crazy thing is we work hard to earn a good salary and make a good life for ourselves and our family but often we don’t make time to take care for ourselves financially.

I could be wrong.  If you don’t have any outstanding financial to-dos then congrats to you and please let me know in the comments below.  But based on everything I’ve observed in my adult life, most of us have outstanding things we need to tackle when it comes to our finances.  Like what?

• Paying Off Debt
• Creating a Retirement Plan
• Building an Emergency Fund
• Creating an Estate Plan
• Buying Life Insurance
• Rolling Over a 401k
• Opening an IRA
• Finding a New Job
• Creating a Budget
• Tax Planning
• Rebalancing Investments
• Saving Up For a Big Expense

It’s a long list that I bet you could add something to.  My point isn’t to make you feel bad about your outstanding items; in fact, my goal is to help you get them done.  Let me explain with a quick story.

My Late Night Struggle

I don’t remember exactly which night it was but I had a long day at work, dealt with a sick kid when I got home, and then had a conference call until almost midnight.  As I sat down to work on my “master plan” for this site I felt frustrated and discouraged.  I was tired and spent, I didn’t have the time or energy to tackle this big task.  However, I knew I’d be equally exhausted the following night and the night after that.  So I told myself to suck it up and just get one thing done that evening.

Then I realized that you probably go through something similar.  In your case it’s probably not your website you’re worried about but some aspect of your finances.  You work a long day and have all sorts of responsibilities once you get home.  At the end of the night the last thing you feel like doing is working on your finances.

Why are these things so daunting?  Maybe you don’t know where to start.  You might not understand all the details.  You don’t want to make the “wrong” decision. There are lots of barriers, mental and tactical, that get in your way.

It Doesn’t Have to Be So Overwhelming

As I sat there thinking about how I should just get one thing done I realized that the same thing applies to your nagging financial worries.  You don’t have to be overwhelmed by these big tasks that you’re facing.  You can work on them a little bit regularly and get them taken care of in time.

You see my professional background is in software development and project management – I spend every day taking big problems and breaking them into little, manageable pieces.  So finally a little light bulb went off and I realized that I can use those same methods and apply them to your financial projects.

What I Built For You

If you read yesterday about how I failed you in 2011 then you’ll remember that this year I commited to creating something awesome. What I’ve built is a system that takes a financial project and breaks it down into tiny actionable pieces. It gives you the information and tools you need to complete each action and lets you track your progress as you complete them a little bit at a time. 

I’m excited about rolling it out because the beginning of the year is a time when we traditionally make our goals and start working towards things that we want to get done.  I’m in the middle of putting the finishing touches on this tool and I’m asking you to share your biggest financial goal for 2012.  Whichever one is the most popular is the goal that I’ll build into the first release of the new system. So far there’s one goal that’s beating all the others, we’ll see if it holds it’s top spot – Click hereto vote for your goal..

Every year we make New Year’s resolutions with great intentions and on January 1st we try and stop our old habits cold turkey.  Why do we start trying to make major life changes smack dab in the middle of the busiest time of the year?

I don’t know about you but I always have a lot going on with family, work, and the holidays so its tough to suddenly introduce big new life changes right in the middle of it all.  This year I propose something different – this year I challenge you to get a head start! 

Start Today, December 1st

Pick one thing you desperately want to change in your life, only one thing so you can keep focus.  Something you want to change more than anything else.

Now commit to working towards that change beginning today.  Rather than waiting until January 1^st, get a head start.  When the first of the year rolls around and everyone else is starting fresh on the first day of their New Year’s Resolutions, you’ll aleady have a whole month under your belt. 

When your friend’s talking about how they’ve lost 5 lbs by the second week of January, you can just smile to yourself and think about how you’ve already lost 2–3 times that much.

Get Momentum On Your Side

When everyone else is struggling to get past that rut in the third week of January, you’ll have a huge advantage over them.  You’ll have momentum behind you! You will have been living your new habit for almost two months and will definitely be seeing some results. 

They say if you do something seven times in a row it starts to become a habit.  So by January 15^th, it’ll have been 45 days, plenty of time to make it a part of your routine.  You’ll have beaten back the cold sweats and major urges and be on a roll. 

You may even be doing well enough that you can start working on a second change.  Many people can’t even see one New Years Resolution through, you might even be able to knock out two!

Listen All Y’all, It’s a Sabotage

I’m sure the Beastie Boys weren’t singing about the month of December when they sang about “Sabotage” but if you have resolutions about losing weight or getting your finances back on track then December is definitely the month of sabotage.

With holiday shopping and cookies galore the last month of the year can be a total disaster.  It’s a time of overindulgence both financially and from a calorie perspective.  If you spend December spending way too much money and eating tons of treat, then January 1st you’ll be in the hole.

So make that change December 1st. Reign in your spending or the number of calories you’re eating and you’ll have a major head start on January 1^st – instead of being behind before you start.

I don’t know how many people I’ve known (myself included) who started a new diet January 1^st but spent the last two weeks of December stuffing their face because they know they won’t be able to in January.  Obviously the problem is you put on an extra five or ten pounds before your new diet even starts so you start out fat and discouraged.

The same goes for spending. If you go bezerk with Christmas presents you could off on January 1st with major debt – or at least some big bills to pay.

Just look at the picture at the top of this post. Who would you rather be January 15th? The guy out in front with an advantage or the guy who hasn’t left the blocks yet?

Change is Hard

Another problem we run into is that we begin January 1st and expect everything to go perfectly.  Often a major life shift requires significant changes and if we haven’t thought these through we can run into some serious resistance when we implement our new self.

By starting a month early you’re actually able to work through those issues and address them now so when the New Year does roll around you’ll have already figured out how to incorporate those changes into your life. 

So, my challenge to you is to get a head start this year along with me.

My Sugar Embargo

For all of December and January, I won’t eat any sweets.  No cake, cookies, candy, ice cream, pie, or anything sweet.  I’m going on a sugar embargo during the holidays and beyond. 

Just like the basics of personal finance are simple (spend less than you earn) the essence of losing weight is also simple (burn more calories than you eat).  So the second part of my change is that I’m starting to exercise twice a week (I know it doesn’t sound like much but it will be twice as much as I’m exercising now).

That’s my head start.  What’s yours?

How to Keep a New Year’s Resolution?

Penelope recommends two things I’ve mentioned before:

• Visualize Achieving your Goal – A New Year’s Resolution Secret
• Start Now – How to Set Awesome New Year’s Resolutions

She also suggests:

• Starting Small – Don’t ask yourself to accomplish the change all at once.  Let yourself ease into it.
• Focusing on the 1^st Three Weeks – The first few weeks are important to establishing your actions as a habit. Penelope shares research that suggests three weeks is the magic amount of time.
• Goal Wording – How you phrase your goal is important, you want to be specific so you know precisely what you need to do in order to reach it.  Penelope also recommends your New Year’s Resolution be explained to describe something you want, not a goal that’s only supposed to make other people happy. This makes sense, if it’s phrased to describe something you want then you’re more likely to take action.

New Year’s Resolution Tips

Here are a few other things you can do to help make sure you keep your New Year’s Resolution:

Make it Public

If you announce your goals to others in your life then you’ll be accountable to them for making your goals happen.  If other people know that you’re supposed to do things like:

• Start bringing your lunch to work so you can save money & build an emergency fund
• Work overtime for funds to pay off credit card debt
• Setup an IRA, 401k, or 403b to start saving for retirement
• Begin a college fund for your kids

then you’ll be more likely to take action.  If you’re the only one that knows about your goal, it’s easier for you to sluff off and say to yourself “I’ll start that next year”.

Track Your Progress

The simplest way is to keep a notebook where you write down each day what you did, or didn’t do, to reach your goal.  You could combine “Make it Public” with tracking your progress and start a blog where you declare your goals and then document your progress towards them.  If you’re not comfortable sharing with the world, there are ways you can limit access to specific people in your life. 

However you do it, be sure to track your progress. Goals that aren’t tracked are less likely to be achieved.

Okay, enough about New Year’s resolutions.  You’re probably sick of reading about them for the last few days, I won’t write about them again until next year : )

I’m not saying that if you imagine yourself as 30 pounds lighter or $5000 richer that it will automatically happen.  However, visualizing how things will be in your life once you’ve reached your goal can be the first step to making it happen.

I think I’ve already talked about it in one way or another on this site but the idea is you imagine your ideal scenario and take notes about every little detail.  Once you know what you want to acheive then you can work backwards to figure out what specific actions to take to get there.

For example, once you have your ideal image in your head, you ask yourself what would I have needed to do to make this a reality?  Once you figure that out, you ask what the preceding action would have been, what the action before that would have been, and so on.  You keep working backwards from your imagined perfect future and keep a list of the actions, until you reach your current day status.

There you have it, a list of all the actions you need to take to reach your goal.  This can be kind of tricky with more abstract goals but it works well with concrete ones, specific financial goals are a good example.  If you set a money resolution of building up a $5000 emergency fund by the end of the year, you can list out specific steps you’ll take to spend less, earn more, and save more.  If the numbers add up to $5000 over 12 months and you follow the actions you list, then you should have your money goal saved by the end of the year.

Another New Year’s Resolution tip is to work on your goals ahead of time, before the ball drops in Times Square.  A little planning ahead can help you set awesome New Year’s Resolutions!

I’ve always heard that being very specifc about your goals increases your chances of achieving them. Last weekend, I saw some pretty good examples of this theory in action.

A Ten Year Plan

I met with about 40 other people for our 10 year college reunion and spent a few hours catching up and visiting about where they were in life.  During the course of the evening they were showing a video that was taped about 10 years ago, interviewing members of our class right before graduation.

One of the questions people answered on the tape was, “Where do you think you’ll be in 10 years from now”.  Some of the responses were pretty general like “I hope I’ll be making a lot of money somewhere”. Other people laid out their plans in great detail.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t on the video.  I’m not sure why I didn’t participate; perhaps I was studying hard for finals or maybe I was celebrating my pending graduation.  Whatever the reason, I know if I had that I wouldn’t have been as detailed as many of the responses that I heard.

Achieving Goals

As I visited with people after we watched the video I made a point to ask each person how close they had come to meeting their “ten year plan”.

Not surprisingly, more of the alumni with very detailed plans had reached the point in their life that they had been aiming for.   Of course not everyone’s plans had worked out.  Some people had changed course over time, others had tried unsuccessfully and had to change their plans.

Overall, the people that were specific about what they wanted their life to be like ten years down the road were more likely to have achieved those goals.  Now I need to sit down and make out my 10 year plan to get my family where we want to be when our kids are teenagers, gulp : )