Start Money Goals on Your Birthday, Not January 1st
If your New Year’s resolution crashed and burned out spectacularly, you might think you were out of luck until next January 1st. This is not a solution unless you start it on the first day of the year, right?
This thinking is far from the truth. You can choose any day of the year for a new start and track your progress accordingly.
But if you’re looking for a big day to set a financial goal (or any other goal for that matter), consider starting your journey on your birthday. Katherine Milkman , a professor of business at the University of Pennsylvania, advocates this in a Wall Street Journal article on financial goals.
A recent Milkman study found that when employees were reminded to start saving for retirement or increasing their contributions on their birthday, they saved more than people who were encouraged to do the same on other holidays.
In addition, previous Milkman research showed that we are more ambitious about birthdays because we have an increased sense of the passage of time. Whatever you did last year that you didn’t like, you can just leave behind and start over. (The milkman and her colleagues actually called it the Blank Slate Effect .)
If your birthday is in January, you may not feel obligated to take this opportunity to start over in a frenzy of determination. If your birthday is in December, sorry we missed you. But if you feel obligated to tie your new positive actions and developing habits to an important date, why not tie it to the most important date of all: your birthday?
We might even argue that the new year is doomed to fail because of the simple fact that it comes right after the holiday season – you know, at a time when you tend to spend more than any other time of the year. … It may be that your finances are already feeling stressed as December turns into January, which makes you drown or float.
If you can’t imagine waiting for your big day next fall to start a new financial goal, April is also a good time to start. As Tim Donnelly writes , January is too cold, dark and dull to do anything right. Wait until spring arrives and head off to a new business, and the hope of a new, brighter season may be the extra motivation you need.
Not sure what your financial goal is to start by eating a piece of the pie? We have a few ideas in this post .