Setting Goals For January

Happy New Year!!

I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. I had a very restful (and a bit restless) weekend so I have to admit, I was actually excited to get back to work yesterday.

I know that the topic on everyone’s mind nowadays is setting goals and making resolutions for the year ahead but I want to get realistic here so I’m going to talk about goals for 2016 but also specifically for January- let’s take it one month at a time.

When I think of what I want to get accomplished in 2016, well, that can be overwhelming. If I look back at some of the goals I had for last year, the area where I feel I fell short and let myself down is in the area of personal finance (I can’t be the only one). While I did manage to save money, I’m not where I wanted to be at year-end. I had to borrow some money towards the end of 2015 BUT I’m not going to beat myself up because I ended up borrowing from myself.

I’m coming for my money in 2016 and I’m not going to let a little setback discourage me. Here are my money goals for 2016:

• Save 30% of my paycheck each month I know that sounds like a lot but when I crunch the numbers, it’s definitely possible. I just have to stick to it…and a budget.
• Increase my 401k contribution by 3% I’ve gathered a nice little nest egg in the short amount of time I’ve been in this job so I’d like to see that grow even more. You can read a good article on the significance of increasing your contribution by just 1% here.
• Boost my credit score to the 720+ range Currently, my credit score is at 630 (I monitor it regularly with Credit Karma). It turns out that the reason it was so low was because I didn’t have any credit history. That’s right, I’ve been credit-free since around 2005. I’ve worked so hard in the last year to pay off small balances that were in collections and boost my credit and it’s been steadily increasing over that time. I currently only have one credit card that I use for emergencies (with a $0 balance) and have been making my payments ahead of schedule so I think my credit score will continue to increase.

OK, so what is my January goal? Well, my goal for this month is to have a no-spend month. I’m holding myself accountable by joining the #JanuaryMoneyDiet over at Happy Simple Living. It’s going to be a little tight but I think I can do it!

What are your goals for the first month of the new year and beyond?