Every new year brings new resolutions, promises to one’s self to be better: lose weight, stop smoking, freshen old relationships, and so forth. Engaged coaches need to know what new paths their clients want to travel down.

It’s an important aspect of the human condition, and as natural as moon phases, to want to be a better person, a better you, and what better time to make a clean break with your bad habits than a brand new year. There is only one problem: as the new year becomes the new normal, and old routines beg to be revisited, and its just too damn easy to slip back into comfortable old ruts.

We cannot help with the weight, or the smoking or the relationships,  but we can offer you a plan to be a better steward of your money starting in 2019.

Here is a list of 19 resolutions you can adopt in 2019, some you may need, some not, but in either case don’t adopt them all at once. Pick one or two that have the most relevance to you, and start tomorrow, January 1, 2019.  Try it on. See how it feels.  Then make a habit of it.

  1. Put yourself on a written budget.
  2. Spend less on useless stuff.
  3. Cut credit card purchases.
  4. Pay off debt.
  5. Start a small business enterprise and research ways to generate passive income.
  6. Save money, time and aggravation by converting your existing random portfolio into a strategic passive portfolio.
  7. Do your own taxes and learn to reduce them throughout the year.
  8. Turn off the stock market channel and do your own research.
  9. Buy three good books on investing.
  10. Consider making index fund selections the core of your retirement plan, and increase your 401K contribution.
  11. Start or add to a ROTH IRA.  Remember: You can make your 2018 ROTH contribution by April 15, 2019.
  12. Cut unnecessary household expenses. Do you really need a landline anymore? Start there and cut ’til it hurts!
  13. Hold onto your older car and keep it in tip top shape.
  14. Increase your investment vocabulary.
  15. Create organizational finance files at home.
  16. Each month, learn more about a new sector or industry, like energy or tech.
  17. Build a Bucket Strategy
  18. Declutter. Everything. Including your portfolio.
  19. Create a personal financial objectives plan.

Sure, 19 in ’19 may be a gimmicky way to start off the new year resolutions, but it’s a start.

Happy 2019 from WealthKeep!