Financial New Year's Resolutions for 2022 - Part 2

Improve your financial life.

Embrace the allure of a fresh start with the new year. It's a great time to commit to your money goals, budget better, pay down debt, ditch bad habits and improve your financial picture to reach your goals. If you want 2022 to be a better year for your money, consider making these financial New Year’s resolutions.

Review your subscriptions.

Take a look at every service you subscribe to and see if there are any you could eliminate. It happens all the time – you sign up for a free 30-day trial and forget to cancel when the trial ends. You tell yourself you’ll cancel the subscription before the next automatic deduction and life happens and you forget yet again.

These days, it isn't only entertainment streaming subscriptions to keep track of, but others from cosmetics to razor blades to meal plans. It used to be that coffeehouses were a hotbed of money mismanagement, according to personal finance experts, but in recent years it's subscriptions.

Start investing.

Investing goes hand-in-hand with the "pay yourself first" resolution that we mentioned earlier.

“Set a monthly plan of investing x dollars every month and stick with it, regardless of what is going in the markets,” says John Hunter, the MBA program director and professor of practice at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York.

There is plenty of guidance available on building a beginner investment portfolio. Hunter advises investing with a longer-term mindset. "Follow the historical market returns and don't even think about the ups and downs of the markets. Don't try to time the markets. The markets are smarter than you are. Think long term, act long term, be disciplined and you will get to your goals," he says.

Make a will.

Having a will is important, especially if you have a lot of assets.

“If you don’t have a will, make 2022 the year to have it written,” says Brian Porter, professor of management at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. “It isn't necessary to hire an expensive attorney and pay several thousand dollars. Alternatively, there are online will makers that cost very little, around $100. These include Quicken Willmaker & Trust and LegalZoom."

Maximize credit card rewards.

Porter offers a more fun financial resolution for credit card holders: Maximize your credit card cash back, miles or points rewards.

“Hopefully you already pay off any credit card debt monthly and pay no interest charges,” Porter says. If that's the case, he suggests applying for a new rewards credit card if you don’t have a good one already.

“There are numerous reward credit cards offering generous enrollment bonuses, such as 100,000 miles for spending $3,000 during the first three months. The bonuses are often valued at $1,000 or more,” Porter says. “The $3,000 threshold needed to earn the bonus is easily achieved with purchases you may already have to make such as auto and homeowners insurance.”

Next week, we will look at 4 more financial resolutions to consider in the 2022.

(Partially reprinted from money.usnews.com)