People don’t realize it, but the Latin root for January (Ianua) means door. So, depending on your perspective you are either opening the door to the new year, or shutting the door on the prior year. If you are like me, it is more of a slamming the door shut and creating shock waves in the space-time continuum. Now onto the important things for the new year.
Find deep discounted items
Treadmills, ellipticals, and a whole host of other exercise equipment is usually deeply discounted in January. How great is it that the deals are also around the time people are buying the equipment? Getting healthy may be one of the most popular new year’s resolutions, but not many people have a new year’s resolution of turning a treadmill into a clothes rack.
Another set of items usually on discount is bedding. How perfect for those cold January nights. Not sure what Sferra sheets would sell for in January, but a man can dream, right?
Use a new finance app
A lot of people can give us pushback about using the apps that are available, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t give the old college try on at least one of them. If you hate budgeting, Mint, among others, can truly help you with getting over your hatred. If you think saving is going to be too hard, try the Acorns app, which rounds up your purchases and invests the difference in a robo-investing platform. Heck just get popular with the millennial crowd and try something like Venmo, where you can send and receive cash from friends.
Set a non-financial goal
If you are going to be in the mindset of setting goals, why not make sure you are also setting some small non-financial goals. Decide to put things away instead of letting them lay around. Decide to quite binging on office chocolate in the afternoon. Or, as I ask my wife regularly and it makes me sound like my old man, “you gonna keep that door open to heat the great outdoors?”
The most important thing, though, is to decide to treat January as both an ending to 2018 and the beginning of 2019. Have a safe and happy New Year!