Financial New Year’s Resolutions: Setting Yourself Up for Success in 2025

As we begin the new year, this is a great time to make a financial new year's resolution to have a financially successful 2025. A good way to approach this process is to review your 2024 from a financial perspective. What worked well and in what areas can you improve? This is a good time to talk with a financial advisor to get their advice on what you can be doing to help ensure a financially successful 2025.

This can include reviewing and updating your financial plan and establishing healthy financial habits for you and your family that focus on your long-term goals.

Review and Update Your Financial Plan

A financial plan is a key element in achieving financial success. The beginning of the new year is a good time to review your financial plan. Have your financial goals changed? How did you do in 2024 against your planning objectives?

The beginning of the year is a good time to revise and update your financial plan and your ongoing strategies. This might include:

• Are your debt repayment strategies on track?

• Are you on track with your retirement savings?

• Are you saving enough for your children's education?

• Is your investment portfolio properly allocated?

These and a host of other financial resolutions and strategies should be considered at the beginning of the year, based on your goals for the new year and beyond.

In addition to reviewing your goals, the critical piece is to implement changes where needed. If you need to be more aggressive in paying down debt, do your best in this area. Reducing debt helps free up funds for other purposes such as saving for other goals.

Establish Healthy Financial Habits

The beginning of the year is a good time to review your spending and savings habits to help ensure both are on track to allow you to reach your financial goals.

If you have not already done this, the beginning of the year is a good time to establish a monthly spending budget. This is a great tool to help you monitor your spending on a monthly basis and to help ensure that it stays within limits you set.

This is also a good time to be sure that your savings is automated as well. While you likely have automated your 401(k) deferrals from your salary, be sure that this amount is enough. Beyond savings for retirement, it is a good idea to automate your general savings to be sure you have sufficient cash reserves as well.

It can be easy to overspend. This is normal, but it is important to set limits and boundaries on spending. If you reached your monthly spending limit, then it is okay to say any new expenditures will have to wait. This can work if expenditure is something that is "elective" and not a requirement like food or medicine. In some cases, you may find yourself needing to reduce spending in future months.

Focus on Long-Term Goals

Most of all, it's critical to review and if needed adjust your strategies to achieve long-term goals, These might include things like:

• Buying a first or a newer home

• Saving for your children's education

• Achieving an early retirement

• Travel in the form of several major trips

• Starting or buying a business

Whatever your long-term goals, planning for them as early as possible and reviewing your plans to save for these goals on a regular basis are critical in achieving these long-term goals. Determining if your savings are on track, if you need to adjust your investments or make any other changes along the way is an ongoing process. Setting a strategy and then failing to check in on your progress blinds you from how your investing and savings program is going, and you might find yourself farther behind than is feasible to be able to catch up.

Talk with your Wedbush financial advisor. They can help you establish long-term financial planning goals and strategies, and they can help with tracking ongoing spending.

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