As we enter the New Year, if you’re giving more thought to how you can reach your financial goals in 2025, you’re not alone.
New Year’s resolutions often focus on improving physical and mental health by eating healthier, exercising more, or spending less time online. However, not too many people associate the New Year with a chance to improve your financial health.
Have you thought about your financial resolutions for the New Year yet? If not, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.
A brand new year is the perfect time to set healthy financial resolutions that can lead the way to a less stressful financial future.
In this article, we’ll explore five financial resolutions for the New Year to help you improve your financial situation in 2025.
Whether you want to save money for a specific goal, pay down debt, or just make smarter financial decisions, these resolutions will help you manage your money effectively and maintain financial wellness.
1) Assess Your Spending and Saving Habits
When it comes to financial resolutions for the new year, taking a long, hard look at your spending habits is an excellent place to start.
Have you noticed your expenses rising in any specific area? For many, with the cost of living rising, our expenses seem to constantly grow. However, over time and changing life circumstances, these can grow unmanageable without a conscious effort to control spending.
Reviewing your spending and saving habits is an effective way to prepare for the upcoming financial year. Start by collecting and reviewing bills, receipts, and bank statements for any areas of unnecessary spending. Once you’re aware of areas where you’re overspending, you can actively avoid them.
Budgeting can also help you avoid overspending and splurging on impulse purchases. It may even lead to you being able to put more money towards your savings goals.
Assessing your spending and saving habits is the best way to start more effectively managing your money, increasing your savings, and planning for the year ahead.
2) Revisit Your Financial Goals
Reconsidering financial goals is an important resolution for the New Year as it helps you understand what you’d like to achieve over the short, medium, and long term.
Everyone has goals that they want to achieve, but these goals can often change as time passes. Your goals may likely have also changed since you first created your financial plan. For this reason, you may need to revisit and potentially adjust your plan for the upcoming year.
3) Create or Update Your Personal Budget
Many people believe that having a budget can be very constricting. However, tracking your spending through budgeting gives you a clearer understanding of where your money goes every month.
Begin by writing down all your essential expenses, such as rent, groceries, and utility payments. Then, write down all your other expenses for the month and evaluate where your money’s going. You can also do this on a budgeting app, but you need to make sure you choose a safe, well-known app to protect your data.
Creating a budget at the beginning of the year can help you set guidelines for what you can afford to spend and identify areas where you could cut back.
Similarly, updating your budget at the beginning of the year helps you adapt your existing budget and spending to suit any changes in your lifestyle.
4) Pay Down Debt
Debt isn’t inherently good or bad as it completely depends on how you use it. For many, debt is a practical necessity that can help them purchase an expensive but essential asset, such as a home or a car. However, the problem arises when your debt becomes more of a burden than a helpful tool.
Paying down your debt is one of the most rewarding financial resolutions for the New Year in more ways than one. Reducing your debt not only reduces your stress, but it can also help you save money on interest charges, and potentially improve your credit score.
Getting on top of debt means that the money typically paid towards debt could be channelled towards your savings instead. If you’re unsure about how much money to put towards debt, apply the 50/30/20 rule and put 20 percent of your monthly income towards debt repayment.
When it comes to managing debt, it’s often best to begin by paying off the highest-interest debts and then moving to the low-interest debts, to minimise the interest paid over time. Trimming your spending or increasing your income can help maximise payments towards your chosen debt until it’s completely paid off. Then, you simply move on to the next debt on your list until you’re completely debt-free.
5) Build an Emergency Fund
When it comes to financial resolutions for the New Year, setting up an emergency fund is something that you shouldn’t forget. An emergency fund serves as a financial safety net and can help you avoid dipping into other sources of money, such as loans, for unexpected expenses.
A good long term target is to save between three to six months’ worth of living expenses in your emergency fund. This will provide you with more financial security and peace of mind during any challenging times.
Building an emergency fund for the upcoming year could be the key to creating a reliable safety net to get through any unexpected emergencies.
Choose Salad Money for Fair and Affordable Personal Loans
The New Year is an opportunity for change. While for some this can mean changing one’s lifestyle or taking up a new hobby, it is also an excellent opportunity to review your financial situation.
Making financial resolutions for the New Year is one thing, but meeting your financial goals can only be achieved by putting in the work. Once you commit to your financial plan, there will be nothing stopping you from achieving financial success.
At Salad Money, your financial health is our top priority. We recognise that life can occasionally throw some curveballs, and you may require some financial help along the way. That’s why we offer fair and affordable personal loans to lighten your financial burdens.
As a leading UK lender, we offer our fair ‘More Than Your Score’ loans that allow you to access financial support when you need it the most. Additionally, we use an Open Banking system to analyse your loan affordability based on your current financial situation instead of just relying on your credit score.
What’s more, we’re an FCA-regulated and authorised organisation, so we’ll ensure that your data is safe and secure.
Apply for our personal loans now, and to read more blogs like this one, visit our blog page.
