We won’t sugarcoat it: Sticking to a New Year’s resolution is hard! According to a recent Forbes Health survey, the average resolution lasts 3.74 months. Getting past three months is nothing to scoff at, but at Spave, we believe that the best habits should get you closer to your long-term goals. Three months just isn’t enough time to save for a dream home, build a nest egg for retirement, or make a lasting impact for the causes you care about. Read on to learn more about setting, keeping, and growing your resolutions for 2024.
1. Be realist, and really specific
If your resolution is too lofty, accomplishing it will be so difficult that it could discourage you. If your resolution is too vague, it’ll be too easy. The first key to setting a great resolution is that it stands at a healthy balance between something you can attain realistically, but also is specific enough to require active intention.
2. Focus on one or two resolutions
Don’t try to keep track of too many things or think about too many factors. Focus on just one or two things that you need to improve—it’s not only simpler, but you’ll also have an easier time feeling the ripple effect. Getting a better grip on your finances might afford you more time, including more time to work out. Working out more might ease your stress, and so forth. Focusing doesn’t have to mean ignoring other facets of your life.
3. Start small
It can be exciting to dive deep, like purchasing a $1000 exercise bike for a fitness resolution or signing up for every knitting club in your area code, but there’s also power in baby steps. For example, Spave can help you take small but meaningful steps toward your giving goals. Just set easy round-up donations in Spave so that for every purchase, of any size, you’re donating pennies to your favorite charities—and strengthening their missions. You can make an impact at any scale, as long as you feel intentional about it.
4. Create a plan of action
Once you know what you want to accomplish, it’s important to determine the best path toward it. If your resolution is about financial wholeness, you can set up different goals in the Spave app around saving and charitable giving so that you can track the different milestones you’ll work towards and celebrate. Knowing what milestones and smaller goals you need to hit will help your baby steps feel more powerful, and you’ll have an easier time being accountable.
5. Make time for accountability
Accountability is fun when you’re succeeding, but more difficult when you’re not quite reaching your goals. Either way, accountability is key to the health of your ambitions. Accountability can be personal, like setting up milestone reminders on your calendar, or social, like getting together with friends to talk about your resolution progress. It will be so rewarding to look back on your progress or to discover more about your journey.
6. Celebrate small wins
Take stock of your accomplishments, your growth from where you started, and the potential you’re building toward in positive ways. A celebration doesn’t have to be a big party—it can be a treat like an XL latte for yourself, or an act of generosity like a one-time spaveNOW donation in your Spave app. Whatever you do, let it motivate and energize you to keep moving closer and closer to sustaining your goals.
7. Learn from setbacks
When you take stock or hold yourself accountable, you might also find yourself falling short of your goals—and that’s ok, because those moments are opportunities. If you’re using the Spave app, you can look at your spending data and find unique insights to learn from. When you learn from setbacks, you’re able to push forward smarter than before.
8. Incorporate passion and joy
This principle applies at every step, so we’ve saved the best for last. You should be able to infuse your own personal passion or joy into every goal you set. For example, you might choose to be healthier because it means you can run around and keep up with your toddler, or you might work towards financial wholeness because you’re passionate about improving opportunities for your underserved neighbors. Whatever fuels you, we believe that you should give to causes you’re truly passionate about and work for dreams that are truly yours.
At Spave, we live by the Tanzanian proverb, "Little by little, a little becomes a lot.” That applies to every goal you make, whichever time of year you set it. The Spave app is designed to help you keep your financial wholeness-related resolutions, empowering you to do all of this and more. Passion is built into our app—we connect you with over 1.5 million accredited nonprofits that all do amazingwork to make a better world. We help you break down your goals into manageable milestones so that every bit makes a difference.
Whether you meet your goals through microdeposits and microdonations on Spave, daily walks logged in a fitness journal, weekly entries in a gratitude journal, or anything else that matters to you, anything you do can make a big impact by the time you start to think about 2025.
