5 Money Goals to Work on in February

How’s your 2023 going? We’re into a brand new month of this year, and I know that it can be hard to stay focused on the goals and New Year’s resolutions we set at the beginning of the year. Or maybe you realized you set your goals a little too high, and before you can reach them, you maybe need to do a little more leg work building up to that rung in the ladder.

Either way, I know what it’s like to feel like you hit a proverbial wall when it comes to achieving goals, especially financial goals. So if you’re feeling a little less than as we enter into February, I wanted to give you some ideas for goals that you could set to achieve in the month of February that I believe can help you get just one step closer to achieving your overall financial goals for 2023.

1. Look back at your expenses from January.

I know this seems daunting, but it’s hard to know how to manage your money well and plan well if you aren’t aware of just how much you’re spending every month. The talk of the town right now is how high groceries are and how gas prices are slowly rising. So let’s make sure we have a good idea of how much we’re already spending on those two categories before we get too far into the new month. It’s quite simple.

Log into the account(s) where you spend the majority of your money. Pull up the last 30 days’ bank statement – you can either print it out or download it as a spreadsheet. Then using different colors to highlight, go through your expenses and highlight like expenses. So, groceries highlight all related expenses in yellow. Fuel, highlight in pink. Pet-related expenses are in blue. And so on and so on. Then tally up the categories. Allow this information to help you make better decisions going forward on your spending and plan your February spending around these.

2. Calculate your total debt and start attacking it.

If you have debt and you haven’t yet started attacking it, let’s make a payoff plan. Total up your total debt (the balances on all your debts, not including your mortgage). Then tally up the total minimum payments due on all your debts. Choose a debt payoff method and start attacking the first debt according to your chosen payoff method. Even if it’s just an extra $5 towards it – it’s something! And freeing up your debt one debt at a time will help to free up your income.

3. Check to see if your employer offers an employer match.

Not every employer offers this, but many do. Contact HR and see if your company offers a match on your retirement contributions. This is a part of your compensation package and can help you grow your retirement savings without taking extra money from you. So it’s definitely worthwhile checking out! For example, say your employer offers a 6% match, which means if you contribute 6% of your pretax income to your 401(k), your employer will match that 6%, so it’s like contributing 12%, but you’re only paying for half!

4. Open a Roth IRA

If you’re self-employed or if you fall below the income limits for a Roth IRA, open one up! There are many options out there but the two that I have personal experience with are Vanguard and Fidelity. Fidelity allows you to start investing with as little as a $100, so it’s usually the firm I recommend folks start at. I also highly recommend the .pdf workbook Investing Made Simple by Mom and Dad Money. It’s a fantastic guide to helping you understand the ins and outs of investing written by a CFP.

5. Determine a savings goal and start saving in an HYSA.

I know, I know. Inflation sucks right now, and your wallet is probably already feeling the pinch. The idea of saving money may seem out of reach for you, but as a friend once said to me, “Jess, if the IRS raised your taxes and said you now have to give me 5% of your income in addition to what you already pay – what would you do? Of course, you’d probably be mad and angry, but you’d eventually pay because you don’t want to go to jail. So you’d learn how to live on less because you had to.“

And that’s true here too. It’s hard to save money – there’s no one to come shut off our water if we don’t deposit money in our savings account like there is if we don’t pay our water bill. So there isn’t as much of a “threat” if we don’t put something into savings. But since Recession is another buzzword floating around, let’s get real. You know what the scariest part about a Recession is? It’s not inflation. It’s not high-interest rates (those usually start to go down during a Recession). It’s job loss. And if you lost your job today, would your family be able to live on the money you have saved in your Emergency Fund? If not, it’s time to up our savings and stick it into a high-yield savings account (HYSA).

P.S. CIT’s APY on their Savings Connect account is still at 4.05%. This is the bank we use for our Emergency Fund HYSA. We also have their echecking account so we can have instant access to the money in our EF when we need to use it. Head here to check them out.

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