Financial goals for 2018

2017 is all done and dusted and you should really start thinking about how to achieve your financial goals for 2018. Many make New Year’s resolutions that unfortunately do not last whether it be losing weight or looking to save money towards a holiday or house deposit.

The hardest part is setting up a routine that you can stick to and creating a plan that is both realistic and achievable. Today we’re going to cover a few ways to make financial resolutions going into 2018.

Budgets are the first steps to gaining financial order in your home.

Don’t attempt to do your entire budget in one sitting. Break it up over the course of a few days to make the process more manageable. Take your time to gather all of your income and expense information. Be thorough to make sure you’re not missing anything.

Save all your information into a worksheet and take a look and figure out where you can do some fine tuning, either to pay down your debt or increase your savings goals. Above all, make sure you’re making as much money as you’re spending to stay out of the red.

Now that you have a budget to work with start working towards an emergency fund if you don’t have one already. Something – be it a car repair, an emergency root canal, or a job layoff – always comes up to throw you off your monthly budget. To keep these incidents from running you into debt, you need to have an emergency stash in an easily accessible account.

How much do you need in your emergency fund?

Track all of your spending for an entire month including everything from your mortgage payment to your lunch at work, and multiply that monthly total by three. That three month operating budget might be a little higher and even intimidating at first. This is the minimum you should have on hand in case anything drastic were to happen and you need some cash to get you through the rough spots.