If your New Year’s resolution has crashed and burned in a spectacular fashion, you might be thinking you’re out of luck until next January 1. It’s not a resolution unless you start it on the first day of the year, right?
That thinking couldn’t be further from the truth. You can choose any day of the year for a fresh start and track your progress accordingly.
But if you’re looking for a milestone day to set a financial goal (or any other goal, for that matter), think about starting your journey on your birthday. Katherine Milkman, a business professor at the University of Pennsylvania, campaigns for this in a Wall Street Journal article about financial goals.
Milkman’s recent research has found that when employees were reminded to start saving for retirement or increase their contributions around their birthday, they saved more than people who were nudged to do the same around other holidays.
In addition, previous research by Milkman has shown that we’re more ambitious around our birthdays, because we have a heightened sense of the passage of time. Whatever you did last year that you didn’t like you can simply leave behind and start fresh. (Milkman and her colleagues actually named this The Fresh Start Effect.)
If your birthday is in January, you may not feel as compelled to take this opportunity for a fresh start amid resolution madness. If your birthday is in December, sorry we missed you. But if you feel compelled to tie your new, positive actions and developing habits to an important date, why not attach it to the most significant date of all: your birthday?
We could even argue that the new year sets you up for failure due to the simple fact that it comes directly after the holiday season—you know, that time when you tend to spend more than you do at any part of the rest of the year. Your finances may already be feeling strained as December rolls over into January, putting extra pressure on you to sink or swim.
If you can’t imagine waiting until your big day next fall to start your new financial goal, April is also a good time to start. As Tim Donnelly writes, January is too cold, too dark, and too dreary to do anything right. Wait until spring has arrived to set off on your new venture and the hope of a new, brighter season may be the extra motivation you need.
Not sure which financial goal to pursue starting once you finish off that slice of cake? We’ve got a few ideas in this post.