Making successful financial goals for the new year

Choreo certified financial planner Michelle Buria shares some tips if you are looking to implement some financial goals for your New Year’s Resolutions. “Money is emotional”, Michelle says, “So when you are looking at your financial planner, and looking at goals for the next year. You really want to put some things in place to take away that emotion. Because in the long run it’s really going to help our overall health.

First she suggests you increase your savings. Maxing out your 401k is a big way to help with that. If you haven’t maxed out your 401k you can increasing it by a percent or two essentially giving yourself a raise. Michelle says, “that small increase isn’t really noticeable on a paycheck but in the long run it does make a difference.”

Automating savings, moving a certain amount from your checking into your savings every month, is another way to help with increasing your savings. And you can even open accounts for certain saving occasions. Like a holiday account or for a trip.

A second tip for financial New Year’s resolutions is to document non-essential spending. Take a look at how often you spend money on things like tickets, going out to eat, and other things you have control over and write it down. Although things could only cost $5.00 a day that adds up at the end of the year.

Finally you will want to review credit report. You can do this by visiting: www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action. Michelle says, “It’s a good time to close any accounts that you aren’t using. Maybe you opened a new credit card to get a good deal on something and you aren’t going to be using that card going forward, you want to make sure you are closing that because it is going to affect your credit score.”