With the New Year comes an opportunity for resolutions. Many of us make resolutions at this time of year.

Unfortunately, sometime during the New Year we tend to abandon or forget those resolutions. Two of the most popular New Years resolutions are to save money and get out of debt. Two of the most popular resolutions to be broken during the New Year will be saving and getting out of debt. Don’t let that statistic be you!

When a resolution is made to lose weight, eat more healthy or exercise more, there are concrete steps you can take to make good on the resolution – gym membership, personal trainer, exercise class, nutrition club subscription, etc. And thanks to modern technology, you can monitor your progress down to the minute. Results are measurable almost immediate because you can calculate how much you exercise, what your nutrition intake is, and see weight coming off within a week or two.

What steps are you taking to ensure your financial resolutions can be achieved?

Unfortunately, addressing financial matters is not as easy as diet and exercise, and results are not usually immediate. For that reason, it’s easy to get sidetracked more quickly, and becoming sidetracked or distracted is a leading cause of broken resolutions.

Very often, we put their efforts into what we think will yield the best results, but later become discouraged at disappointing results and give up. Or we will soon find that our goals are not attainable and abandon any effort to keep the resolutions.

Now that you know it’s easy to break resolutions about budgeting and saving, you can take steps to ensure success.

R. Joseph Ritter, Jr. CFP® EA is the Executive Director of Zacchaeus Financial Counseling, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in Lake Junaluska, NC which specializes in tax services and financial counseling and planning for low and middle income households.