2025 is here and I want you to become the best financial version of yourself this year.
Before we get into the specific things you can do, I want you to take away the most important lesson – stay consistent.
Most people fail with their “new year resolution” because of lack of consistency.
They give up after two weeks.
In 2024, as an experiment to show that you don’t need a lot of money to get started with investing, I invested $5/day for 365 days.
It returned $240, with the balance sitting around $2,100:
But it’s not about the amount…
Similarly, I started writing content in 2023. I wrote every single day.
I have almost 200,000 followers across social media now. I started this newsletter exactly one year ago.
I wrote every single week, and this is my 52nd newsletter issue.
Regardless of what your “new money resolution” is – I want you to stay consistent & start small (it will help you stay consistent). If you can invest only $100/mo, do it. And do it consistently.
2025 Main Priority
There are a lot of things you should be doing to grow your wealth: investing, asset rebalancing, tax strategy, credit card maximization, retirement planning.
But if you want to improve your finances, you need to budget.
Regardless of how much money you make: there is power in running through the numbers to visualize your spending.
Some people have a formal budget where they write down exactly how much they can spend in each category:
Some people have an informal budget where they just look things over every day/week/month.
This is why personal finance is personal.
However, I believe you should look over your transactions at least once a month.
There are a lot of apps that can connect to your account, but I don’t believe that it’s an effective way to understand exactly where your money is going, as you don’t typically see all the individual transactions.
I personally love using my Expense Tracker, where I just copy & paste my credit card statements and it sorts the data for me after the transaction is mapped out. This forces me to review the numbers.
If you want my tracker, here is a Google Sheets link to make your own copy.
Or if you need the Excel version, just reply to the email.
If one of your goals is to improve your money – start there, and do it consistently.
If you already do some budgeting – try the following:
- Create your investment plan
- Review your asset location
- Make a decision on Roth vs Traditional
- Learn about Asset Protection
- Learn about the impact of investment fees
- Start an HSA
Let’s get to work in 2025.
See you next week.
MC, CPA