Podcast #27 : Financial Resolutions for 2020

What are your 2020 resolutions ? I like to revisit goals/resolutions everyday, every week, and every month. Everyday is a new beginning, do not get discouraged and abandon the resolutions for the entire year if you are not keeping up with them after January. Re-evaluate, and see if you still want to accomplish those goals and what you can do differently to achieve them. 

It is also helpful to look at our prior year and see what our best investments were. My best investment for 2019 was learning to manage my own emotions. This has improved my whole life. Once you learn to recognize your emotions : sadness, anger, anxiety, happiness,  this gives us power. Then being able to just sit with our emotions, instead of reacting with actions like over spending, over eating, yelling back, is empowering. 

For me, the cycle was feeling awful for whatever reason, eating to try to feel better, feeling guilty about the eating, then eating again, it was a perpetual cycle. 

I am glad that I invested my time in reading different books and listening to different podcasts. I am still learning, but this was a major accomplishment. 

My big suggestions for next year : 

1. Invest in yourself → it can be time set out for yourself to read a book, workout, or do nothing! 

Check out the book section for my other favorite books. Books open up a new world. 

1. Track your spending : knowing where your money is going is the key to better finance. You can do it for free on a paper, google sheets, microsoft, mint. Or other apps like YNAB. 

1. Calculate your net worth. I have been doing it almost monthly now since entering positive net worth phase, but you can do it every 6 months. This is an easy calculation, assets minus your liabilities.  https://wealthymuslimwomen.us/net-worth-calculator/

1. Learn to pay yourself first, start saving. Get in the habit, even if it is little money. 

1. Make a plan to pay-off your debt. My goal is to be under 100k for my student loans by December 2020. 

1. Learn to invest your money. Money sitting in cash at home loses value. Let your money work for you, instead of you working for your money. There are tremendous amount of resources out there for this. 

1. Write your Will, this is highly emphasized in Islam. I want to review my will again and see if any changes are needed. 

Lastly, money is very important, money buys us time to spend with our kids and our loved ones. We love money. But the point of money is to have time and spend it where we value it the most. 

Some of my personal goals are : to learn quran again with tafseer and deeper understanding, gym 2-3x/ week, meditation, and continue to eat right. 

For my Kids: discover new games with them. We are now learning chess. Jenga is our favorite. Also, deciding for school. 

My couple goals with my husband : Planning date night dates, learn how to dance , more bicycle tours this year, iA. 

For Wealthy Muslim Women: I want to take this to another level. I have big goals and aspirations. 

I would love to hear what you are planning to do next year. Please do share. 

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