Canadian Finance Blog

Posted: 05 Jan 2011 02:00 AM PST

Every time the year changes, I am a little shocked. Its not that I wasn’t expecting it to happen, I’ve had this anniversary on my calendar since January 1st. However, it is just that I am a little surprised that I have to write a different date now. Whenever this happens, I like to take a few minutes and just remember exactly how much stuff happened over the last year. While it may have felt fast, I have accomplished a lot over the last 365 days, and it pays to both remember what has happened, and plan what will happen in the future.

Financially, my wife and I have started to make New Years resolutions to focus our efforts together for the next year. It helps keep us in tune with each other so that one of us isn’t trying to save a bunch of money while the other is trying to spend it. So here’s how we did in regards to our financial resolutions over the last year, and what we’re looking to do over the next year.

2010

Last year’s financial resolutions went quite well. In January my wife and I decided that over the next year, we wanted to purchase a vehicle for ourselves. We broke it down into a few smaller goals, like researching what type of vehicle we would want, and then doing a number of test drives. Ultimately, in May of 2010, we bought a Nissan Versa. While we were definitely able to achieve our goal, what really made us happy was that we paid for the vehicle in cash. At the time, I was 23 and my wife was 24, and living in Vancouver, buying a relatively new vehicle without going into debt is practically unheard of. Therefore, we were and continue to be, extremely pleased with ourselves in being able to save up so much money for ourselves.

We made one other financial resolution in 2010. Being fresh out of college, we both had student loans, as well as a smaller loan to my parents. It was our goal to pay off one of our debts, either the highest interest loan, or the smallest loan. We ended up deciding on paying off the smallest loan, which happens to be the one to my parents. So in March of 2010, we told my parents that within a year we would pay them back completely. Unfortunately, we were unable to accomplish this goal in the calendar year. Between saving for the vehicle, fixing the vehicle, and buying not one, but two sets of tires for the vehicle, all of our extra money went to our new car. We gave ourselves a break though, so we extended our goal until March of 2011, so hopefully we will pay off that loan soon!

2011

Our goals for 2011 are a lot more modest. At the moment, our general goal is to pay off debt. While that is quite a broad goal, we feel this year like we are a lot more established as a couple both physically and financially. When we first moved into our place we felt the need to purchase a few things to make our home “our” home. We bought a couch and some kitchen appliances, but now that we have lived here for a year and a half, we don’t need to buy anything else. Therefore, we do not feel any stress or strain if we put extra money towards our debt. We already have the main goal of paying our smallest loan off by March, but I think we are going to add another goal of paying off our highest interest loan in 2011 as well. Both should be doable.

In order to accomplish this goal, one of the things we are trying to do is a financial fast. For the month of January, we are attempting to eliminate every unnecessary expense. We shall see over the next 4 weeks how that plays out, what works, and what doesn’t work. Hopefully it will help us make a good start to accomplishing our financial goals over the next year!

What are your financial goals or resolutions for the New Year?

Financial Resolutions originally appeared on Canadian Finance Blog on January 5, 2011.