How to Stick to Your Resolution to Better Manage Your Money

Setting a new year’s resolution to better manage your money is easy. Sticking to it? Not so much. Melissa Leong shares why automation and planning before the hard moments hit is the key to success.

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It is so difficult to rely on willpower and executive functioning when it comes to making a financial decision. And so we think that we are going to make a New Year’s resolution, uh, and and we’re gonna have this rule. And on January 1st, we’re gonna flick in the light switch and we’re gonna be. New Melissa Leon is going to be good with money. Um, but that doesn’t account for the fact that, that when you’re tired, when you’re stressed, when you’ve had a long day at work and the boys are yelling at you, and I’m coming into to the house and somebody’s peed their pants and somebody’s this, and I’m not gonna make the right decision, always.

Please. Please, can you just tell the audience that you have young kids? I don’t want them thinking Your husband is having a lot of problems here. This is you’re referring to your young boy, you have little ones, yes. But, you know, in those moments, I think, yes, Uber Eats, I would appreciate you, even though that’s not necessarily in line with my long-term, uh, financial goals. But in the moment, you, you sometimes we use money as a way to alleviate some sort of discomfort and life can be uncomfortable.

And so that happens. You might feel. Not confident to go to a job interview and you think, you know, I’ll buy myself a new suit that’s gonna make me feel pretty good, right? And so some of the brain hacks that you have to do is you have to account for this so-called hot cold empathy gap. This is when, when you are in a cold state, you’re cool, you’re calm, you think I’m gonna go to the gym tomorrow morning.

But then in the hot state, when you wake up at 6:00 AM when your alarm goes off and you think, who made the decision to go to the gym this early? Oh yes, me in the fu you know, me in the past, that was a mistake. Uh, we have a hard time imagining how we’ll behave in the future when things are not perfect, right?

And so one of the hacks that you need to, um, do, is you have to decide what you’re going to do before it happens.

So if you think, you know what? I don’t know if I’m gonna be in the great place to save money at the end of the month. Then the best thing to do is have automation, which I know you’re a huge proponent of, which just takes the, it takes the willpower out of it.

You’re not making decision. You’ve already made the decision. It’s like when my husband says, Hey, can you save me some chips? And I think, yeah, but then I look at the bottom of the bull and it’s empty. If I really wanted to save him chips, I would’ve put chips aside at the beginning and not had the temptation take over me.

And just, you know, just emotionally eating whatever it is. I’ve already taken the, uh, the time and the effort to automate a savings plan, uh, and that, that is, uh, so much more effective.