Are you tired of making a New Year's resolution or a plan? You wanna make a plan for your money this year, but by February you've already forgotten about it. And then another year goes by, you do your taxes and you're like, we made how much money? Where the heck did it all go? If you are ready to make an intentional plan that you can actually stick to in 2023,

come join us inside the Money Plan Bootcamp, which is my five step framework to creating a realistic plan for your money so that you can actually stick to it. Of course, there's gonna be prizes and games and lots of fun things, as well as live trainings and q and as and all the things to set you up for success in 2023. Come join us@budgetsmadeeasy.com

slash bootcamp. You do have to save your seat, so go sign up so that you can get the emails and reminders and come join us inside the Facebook group. Now, this is Ashley with Budgets Made Easy and the Money Mindset Podcast. Today I'm going to talk about the key to sticking to your new year resolutions because you know it's mid-January and a lot of you have either,

you know, said that you hope to lose some weight this year, you hope to pay off some debt, you want to save some money, but you don't have a clear plan for that. You don't have a smart goal for that. So in this episode, I'm gonna talk about the key, the main key, and of course some others. Cuz you know I can't narrow it down to just one ways that you can really stick to your New Year's resolution so that in February you haven't already given up.

And the main key that I want to talk about today is giving yourself some grace, because guess what? January 1st, you didn't wake up as an entirely new person. Believe it or not, you're still the same person you were in 2022. So you do have to start building those habits and routines that are going to get you where you want to go.

And that takes patience, that takes practice, and that takes time. And I think that a lot of us make these big goals and then we are disappointed in ourselves when we screw up. But guess what? You are human. You are a living person that is never going to be perfect. Your plan isn't gonna be perfect. You aren't going to be perfect,

and you have to just go with the flow, expect some setbacks and give yourself grace for when things screw up and to not say, okay, well I screwed up today and Let's say it's Tuesday. I'll start again next Monday. No, start again right now. You have to keep going because even if you are making small progress each day, it adds up at the end of the month,

at the end of the quarter, at the end of the year. But if you just keep saying, Ugh, I screwed up today, I'll deal with it again next month, guess what? That's very little progress. Okay, so maybe you did a day in one month and then you do a couple days the next. It's not going to be as much progress as if you just keep going day to day,

even when you make mistakes. And I see this over and over inside of my Money Success Club where they make a plan and you know, things come up because that's life. Or they had a bad day and they went through the drive through and then they feel like they failed. So then they just say, oh, I'll start again next week, or I'll start again next month.

But let's say it's halfway through the month and you say, oh, I'll start again in February. Well, you still have two weeks left of January to course correct or to keep building those habits in that routine, working on your mindset and all those little things that help you be successful through the whole year, you still have two more weeks to do that instead of waiting until February 1st to try again.

You've just gotta keep going and know that, you know, failure is part of the journey, but so is success. You can't have one without the other. Believe it or not, they go together, right? And so you have to give yourself some grace and have patience with yourself and know that it is never going to be perfect. It's never gonna be perfect,

but all right, so then the key is being patient with yourself, giving yourself some grace. Keep going, don't give up. I feel like those are all kind of the same concept. You just have to keep going and not mentally give up as well as just stop doing what you wanted to do because you could get so much done this year if you just keep going,

even if you take small actions, there's a lot of time in a year. Even if you take small actions, it adds up. It's just like when you're spending money, okay, it feels like, oh $5 here, $10 there, that's not much. But guess what? It adds up to hundreds of dollars by the end of the month. So it's the same thing,

but backwards. The practice and the things that you are doing every day adds up to big success, even at even at a month, but definitely at a year because a year is a long time, right? So some other things that you can do to kind of help keep you going with this and help you, you stick to your goals. I don't usually use the term resolutions because it just doesn't feel genuine to me because it's like we say we're gonna do these things and we don't.

So really what resolutions are, are goals that we want to achieve, but they need to be smart goals. And if you haven't heard the term Smart Goals before, it's just to break it down a specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. So the timely part is this year we're talking about one year, this is what we wanna do.

So that part is taken care of for you. Now, where people usually aren't clear enough or specific enough, is not being specific and measurable. So you know, if you say, I wanna pay off debt this year, well what does that mean? Like how much debt? Which debt? You know, what is your specific goal? Because you really need to have a specific measurable amount so that you know that you're making progress.

Cuz otherwise it feels like you're not making progress. Let's say if you say, well, I wanna pay off some debt this year, and you don't even know how much debt you have, let's say it's like 60,000 and you don't even know that and you start paying it off. But if you're not tracking your progress and know how much progress you're really making because it's not a specific goal either,

then you're gonna feel like you're not making any progress, actually. So when you have a specific amount, and you can start small and you can say, okay, this month I wanna pay off $200, or I wanna pay off that $300 card. Let's say you have something with a really low balance that's specific, it's measurable, it's realistic and attainable,

and it's timely if you say this month, right? So that is a good goal to have. So we need to be specific with that. And I've talked about this in other episodes as well, but you know, it's really important if you wanna stick with your New Year's resolutions that you have a specific goal. It can't be, I just wanna pay off debt,

I just wanna lose weight. Because even with losing weight, like what's a realistic amount? You know, a pound a week, that's like 52 pounds. Now if your goal is a hundred in a year, is it realistic that you're gonna lose two pounds every single week? Is that even possible for you? Like it's the same thing with your money.

It has to be realistic. So when you create your plan, you know that you can actually achieve that goal and it's not a huge impossible goal. Now in last week, in previous episode, I talked about goal setting and having mid minimum goal, a mid-level goal. And I'm like, oh my God, this would be so amazing if I did this goal.

So go back and listen to that episode. It's like two before this one I should have wrote, I Should remember what it is. I think it's like one 13 or one 14. But anyway, you know, make sure that you are setting the goals correctly so that you can be successful and not feel like you're failing and then just want to give up anyway,

right? So make sure that you are setting yourself up for success and not setting yourself up for failure. You gotta keep going. Know that failure is part of the journey, but so is success. So you just have to keep making small steps in the right direction. And even when you have setbacks, because life is life, you will be able to keep going.

And during the Money Plan bootcamp, we're gonna be talking about setting up those habits and those routines so that you can keep going without having to be like put so much mental energy into it, if that makes sense. So, you know, we wanna create habits and routines that just become second nature to us and we don't really think about having to do them.

So that's part of the bootcamp as well. And of course, creating that realistic plan for yourself so that you can keep going because that is the most important thing. Even if you don't hit your big audacious goal for the year, if you keep going and keep making small preg progress over time and throughout the year, you're gonna have a huge success and huge progress by the end of the year when you look back and see the progress that you really have made.

So who's ready to join me for the Money Plan Bootcamp, where we're going to tie this all together for you live. I'm, I'm teaching it live. So if you would like to have support for me and know how I teach you during a live training, come join us. It doesn't cost you a thing, just your time. You just have to show up.

And that can be one of the steps that you are taking toward achieving these goals that you have for yourself this year is just showing up for yourself because, oh my gosh, when I did this in the fall, people had such amazing progress just during this free bootcamp. Like they realized they did have money, they were able to save money during just this three week bootcamp.

They were able to see that they could pay off debt and how they could do it. And it was just really exciting to see people that thought that they were stuck and that they wouldn't be able to pay off debt or save, see that they really could do it. So if you're ready to stick to those New Year's resolutions, let's get going. Come join us inside of the Money Plan bootcamp@budgetsmadeeasy.com

slash bootcamp. We start January 29th. I really hope to see you there. Have a good week.