986. This week, Laura reviews steps for achieving realistic New Year’s goals that can boost your confidence and financial security.
986. This week, Laura reviews steps for achieving realistic New Year’s goals that can boost your confidence and financial security.
Find a transcript here.
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I’m often ambivalent about New Year’s resolutions because so many people create them but give up before January ends or after hitting a snag. Instead, this post outlines a solid, seven-step roadmap for creating more wealth in 2026 that won’t fizzle out easily.
There isn’t a perfect financial plan or budget you can create for 2026 or any year. Improving your personal finances usually comes from setting targets, making adjustments, and realizing slow progress over many years.
The benefit of setting goals or resolutions is that they help you clarify what you want and consider different ways to achieve them. Even if you only reach 80% of a money goal, that’s better than 0%!
Welcome back to episode 986 of Money Girl–I appreciate you downloading the show! I'm Laura Adams, an award-winning author, on-camera spokesperson, female money speaker, and founder of The Money Stack, my Substack newsletter.
If you want more help achieving your money goals and building wealth this year, my next workshop is titled “Set Your Money Strategy for 2026: How to Prioritize & Achieve Financial Goals.” When you subscribe to The Money Stack, you’ll automatically get an invitation to this live event. I hope to see you there!
You can learn more, ask questions, and sign up for the Money Stack for free at LauraDAdams.com. Or leave a voice message with your question or comment by calling 302-364-0308. You can find all this information in the show notes.
7 steps for achieving more wealth in the New Year
Here are seven steps to help you follow a realistic roadmap for more wealth this year.
1. Do a year-end review.
Before you set New Year’s resolutions or financial goals, consider your wins and fails from the past year. For example, if you had a budget or debt-reduction plan, what challenges did you face? Did you have any unexpected income gains or losses? What mistakes did you make that you never want to repeat?
Being honest with yourself about where you may have overspent, undersaved, or felt financially stressed is an excellent starting point for making positive changes in the future.
2. Create or update your Personal Financial Statement (PFS).
One of the best tools I know for evaluating your financial health and where you should make changes is my Personal Financial Statement (PFS). It’s a spreadsheet I’ve used for many years and shared with podcast listeners and newsletter subscribers that calculates my net worth and helps me track my financial goals.
You can create your own money tracker on paper or a spreadsheet. But if you'd like a copy of my PFS template, it's a free gift when you subscribe to my newsletter, The Money Stack, at LauraDAdams.com.
In my PFS template, you'll find a tab to list your assets. These are things you own with significant value, such as real estate, cars, jewelry, artwork, sporting goods, bank accounts, taxable investments, and retirement accounts.
Do your best to assign accurate market values to your assets. I typically lump lower-priced or depreciated items, such as household furnishings, together; however, be as precise as possible for expensive items.
Below your assets, list your liabilities or what you owe, such as mortgages, car loans, student loans, personal loans, and credit cards. A separate tab in my PFS automatically calculates the total liabilities and subtracts them from your total assets. The resulting number (positive or negative) is your net worth.
Knowing your net worth helps you set better money goals by keeping you focused on building it. If your net worth only increases by a small amount each year, it's still a positive sign that you're growing your assets, decreasing your debts, or both.
Even going from a negative net worth to zero shows you're making progress! Remember that even when your income increases, you're not getting ahead financially if your net worth doesn't also increase.
3. Evaluate your emergency savings.
As you complete your PFS and enter your bank balances, take note of your savings. Building an emergency fund should be a top goal if you don't have enough stashed in an FDIC-insured high-yield savings account.
A cash cushion helps you manage financial hardship, avoid debt, and reduce stress. Even a small emergency fund is better than nothing and can be your most valuable safety net when something unexpected happens.
One tip to make saving easier is to automate direct deposits into your emergency savings account. It could be a percentage of your paycheck or a flat amount each week or month. You can ask your employer to set it up or create your own recurring transfer from checking to savings.
If money is tight, consider increasing your income by starting a side business, working overtime, taking on a second job, or doing seasonal work to save more. Slowly build a cash cushion, such as up to six months' worth of your living expenses.
RELATED: How a side gig or small business can lower your taxes
4. Check your investing progress.
Once you have some emergency savings, make a goal to contribute 10% to 15% of your annual gross income to a tax-advantaged retirement account. Even if you can only contribute 1% or 2%, try to increase your savings rate each year.
If your employer offers a workplace retirement plan, such as a 401(k) or 403(b), with free matching, be sure to maximize it. Otherwise, you're turning down free money! Some plans automatically escalate your savings rate at the beginning of each year. You can also use your online retirement account to boost your contribution manually.
Make investing for retirement a top money resolution. It's a huge mistake to believe that you can't afford it, will catch up later, or can rely on Social Security retirement benefits as your sole source of income. As I mentioned, even investing a small amount regularly is better than not investing at all.
READ ALSO: Am I saving enough for retirement?
5. Create a debt payoff plan.
If you're struggling with debt or want to pay it off faster, my book, Debt-Free Blueprint: How to Get Out of Debt and Build a Financial Life You Love, is available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats. It walks you through every step of the process for eliminating any debt.
If you have high-interest loans or credit card debt, they challenge your ability to achieve financial success. Don't accept expensive credit card debt as a way of life, or allow it to rob you of the ability to save and invest.
READ ALSO: What is the best debt payoff method?
6. Build accountability into your goals.
Consider creating your financial goals with someone, like a spouse, life partner, or close relative. You could discuss your goals over dinner, a walk, or a drive.
If you don't have someone you feel comfortable talking to about money or want professional guidance, make an appointment with a fee-only certified financial planner (CFP). They charge for creating financial plans, not selling you products. A great place to find a fee-only advisor is NAPFA.org, the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors.
Another way to build accountability into your financial plan is to automate it. For instance, you might set up a recurring deposit to a high-yield savings account or an individual retirement account (IRA) so it happens without you having to think about it.
7. Set a financial word or theme for the year.
To stay focused on your financial goals, consider setting a theme or a money word that embodies your dreams. For instance, my money word for many years has been "retirement." It reminds me that I’m working towards accumulating a larger retirement nest egg.
However, you might come up with a different word each year that shifts your mindset, motivates you, or guides you if you’re unsure about a financial decision. Some examples of money themes are financial freedom, early retirement, self-employment, or anything that supports your unique dreams.
An excellent way to stay motivated to achieve money goals is to keep your word or theme as visible as possible. You might put sticky notes in your wallet or create screen savers you can’t avoid seeing. Ideas that routinely get your attention are most likely to change your habits.
I hope you can use these seven steps to better understand your financial health, know what you want to achieve, and create more wealth. Here's to a Happy Financial New Year, everyone!
That's all for now. I'll talk to you soon. Until then, here's to living a richer life!
Money Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast, and I want to thank our fantastic team! Steve Riekeberg audio-engineers the show. Holly Hutchings is our director of podcasts, Morgan Christianson is our advertising operations specialist, Rebekah Sebastian is our marketing and publicity manager, and Nathaniel Hoopes is our marketing contractor.