New Year’s Resolutions

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A lot of people don’t bother with new years resolutions any more, which is no surprise when most people set themselves goals like…

- Go to the gym
- Give up alcohol
- Eat healthy

Then by march everyone has given up and another year of fads, trends and ‘getting through the month’ mentality takes over.

A few years ago I started my new years resolutions, that were goals like “pass my driving test”. Which I did, which made it easier me to visit a friend in London, which eventually lead to me living in London and I have never looked back.

This year, two of my goals had been to pay off my loan and my credit card. As I am the sort of person who doesn’t give up on a challenge easily, and the idea of paying a small sum off every month and barely denting the amount just irritated me. Plus after some calculations, I still wouldn’t have paid these debts off in one year. So rising to the challenge I took on some temp work (at the time I was working evening shifts full time) to blitz a large part of my debt. Yes it would be tiring but in my eyes it would only be short-term and worth a few months of hard work for the relief of not having those debts hanging over my head.

After 2 months of working two jobs an opportunity presented itself and I ended up being offered a permanent position at my temp job and by August I had paid off my Loan, Credit card, and last month a good chunk of my overdraft as well. So without that resolution and determination, not only would I have not paid of my debts, that opportunity would never have come up.

So the point I am trying to make is your new years resolutions can open so many doors to life changing opportunities if you allow them to, so really give them some thought.

Make some short-term and some long-term goals. There is nothing more satisfying then ticking off a goal on your list through-out the year. It also provides great motivation for those months that can be a little slow and give you something to strive for.

So here are my New Years Resolutions…

1. Save 10K by the end of the year. (Some creative money-making ideas will be needed for this one! No small feat!)

2. Volunteer for a Charity.

3. Learn how to snowboard. (Made some excess cash from working two jobs so rewarded myself with a brand new snowboard – something I have always wanted to  do and now I have no excuses not to take up this hobby!)

4. Be more social. (Life is always going to throw problems, but I shouldn’t let them take over my life or let financial concerns prevent me from living it – I will just have to be a little more creative with cost-effective days/nights out)

5. Throw out the hair dye! (Time to embrace my natural hair colour! Thinking I might need to wear a hat for a while though! But will save me over £200 a year)

6. Pay off my overdraft £1400. (Other than my student loan (resolution for another year I think), this is the last of my bank debt and I would like to for once view my account with the stupid (-) in front of my balance!)

7. Go on Holiday (This may seem really simple to most but I haven’t taken a real holiday in about 2 years, opting instead for cheaper city breaks for long weekends. So next year I think a two week break somewhere to recharge is necessary!)

So there you have it, not many but challenging and realistic resolutions. Some of them will require planning, some can be obtained quickly while others will take me the full year. But I like the idea of new challenges and finding ways to reach my goals, and like previous years before, I will be very interested to see what new opportunities life will throw at me along the way.
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