We’re coming up on the fourth quarter of the year, and you know what that means. Pretty soon, the holiday buying rush is going to begin. The next few months will feel like a whirlwind. Before you know it, the year will be over, and you’ll be thinking about your new year’s resolutions.
Here’s the problem with new year’s resolutions, though: People always want to make major changes in their lives, but they have no idea how to actually accomplish those goals. You’ve probably been through this when you’ve made new year’s resolutions in the past. You resolved to do something really big – to lose weight or start saving more money, for instance – but you never got far toward achieving that goal because you didn’t have a definite path toward it and didn’t even really know what the first step was. Well, if you don’t know how to get started, the fact that you have difficulty achieving a lofty goal shouldn’t really surprise you.
In this article, we’re going to frame the idea of a new year’s resolution in a slightly different way. The reason why people wait until the end of the year to make resolutions for the following year is because it allows them to put difficult things off until some undetermined point in the future. If you’re thinking of your resolution that way, it’s a sure sign that your level of motivation isn’t very high. It’s also a sure sign that you think of the change as something difficult that you’re not really going to be able to achieve.
If you want to make a real change in your life, it’s time to think about things differently. Instead of waiting for the new year, start making the desired change now. Make it your goal to have made real progress by the end of the year. That way, you’ll be motivated to kick things into high gear in 2023. Most of all, it’s time to stop thinking of making a major change in your life as something that’s too difficult and complicated to achieve. Every difficult task can seem easy if you know the first steps, and that’s where this article comes in.
You’re about to learn the easy ways to quit smoking, lose weight, save money and invest.
How to Quit Smoking the Easy Way
Nicotine is well known to be one of the world’s most addictive drugs – and yet, every day, someone smokes a cigarette for the first time and becomes a nicotine addict for life. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that there’s no easy way to rid yourself of nicotine addiction. The good news, though, is that quitting smoking doesn’t have to be difficult at all. The only thing that you need to do is buy yourself a vape kit and substitute one form of nicotine with another. Vaping may not be as safe as not using nicotine at all, but it does eliminate the tar and carbon monoxide of smoking, and that’s an excellent start. Vaping is significantly less expensive than smoking, and it smells a heck of a lot better as well. People almost invariably report that they feel significantly healthier once they’ve switched to vaping and haven’t smoked for a while.
How to Lose Weight the Easy Way
Losing weight actually isn’t nearly as difficult as it seems, and it only seems difficult because it takes a long time. That’s why you should start now instead of waiting for the end of the year. If you want to drop some excess pounds, it’s simply a matter of burning more calories while consuming fewer calories. If you do those two things, the extra pounds will come off.
- Find opportunities for substituting higher-calorie foods and drinks with lower-calorie alternatives that don’t leave you feeling unsatisfied. Drink carbonated water instead of soda or hard seltzer instead of beer. Instead of eating a steak, try grilling a portobello mushroom. Start your meals with salad instead of bread.
- Don’t think of exercising as something big like “starting a workout routine.” It’s hard to commit to big things. Instead, do small things – find easy ways to get your body moving a little more each day, like taking the stairs instead of the elevator or parking further from buildings. Go outside and play with your dog or children. Spend an afternoon at the driving range or the batting cages.
How to Save Money the Easy Way
Unless you’re wealthy, you probably spend most of your time thinking that you don’t earn enough money to pay for your expenses – and while it’s true that we’re currently in a period of extremely heavy inflation, the fact is that you probably spend more than you need to on many everyday expenses. Here are just a few examples.
- If you smoke, switching to vaping can help you save thousands of dollars per year.
- If you drink bottled water, buy a high-quality water filter and drink tap water instead. The filter will pay for itself in just a few months – and most bottled water is actually filtered tap water anyway.
- If you buy coffee from a chain like Starbucks, brew your own coffee at home.
- Better yet, switch to tea – it’s much cheaper.
- Instead of paying delivery charges for your take-out meals, pick the meals up yourself.
- Better yet, skip the take-out food and cook your own meals.
By making substitutions like these, it’s easy to eliminate overspending and put some extra money into your pocket each month. What can you do with that money? You can invest it – and we’ll discuss that next. Before you start investing, though, pay off all of your high-interest debt. Investing makes little sense when your debts grow faster than your returns. There’s a reason why banks loan their excess money to consumers instead of investing it in the stock market.
How to Invest the Easy Way
Everyone would like to have some sort of nest egg for the future, but they put off investing because they feel that they can’t really earn anything substantial until they have something substantial to put in. That’s not true at all. If you have a starting balance of just $100 and put $15 per day into an investment account yielding 10 percent annually – that’s the average return of the total stock market per year – you’ll be a millionaire in 30 years. It really is that easy – and these days, there are plenty of services that will automatically deduct a small amount of money from your bank account each day and put it into a total market index fund.