Five ways to make next year financially better than this one

You've (almost) survived to 2025. Now it's time to thrive. Frances Cook outlines five financial resolutions to make this New Year's Eve.

You know it’s been a rough year, financially, when the unofficial motto has been “survive to ’25”.

Just hang in there. Drag yourself to the finish line. Points for finishing.

And here we are, with 2025 finally on the horizon. Here’s how to prepare your wallet, and hopefully catch a bit of financial breathing space.

One of the things that can break a budget faster than saying “avocado toast”, is trying to live your life according to someone else’s money rules.

Sure, all of us should probably be trying to watch our spending, save a little, and have some money invested, but there are so many different ways to do those things.

Maybe one person cuts out café coffee, doesn’t miss it, and saves some cash. That’s great, love that for them.

But for someone else, that coffee might be the highlight of their day, a chance to get out of the house or office, and have a small sensory treat. Instead, they start to leave the car at home, and catch the bus, to save some money.

Both approaches are fine. It’s why it’s important to understand the things that bring joy to your life, and the things that don’t. Decide on what is worth keeping, and what you don’t mind skipping, and don’t pay any attention to whether someone else’s budget would look the same.

Are you sick of feeling strapped for cash? Pick one spending category that you’re going to cut back on.

Or, you don’t have savings, and it makes you feel insecure? Create a $20 a week autopayment into your savings, right now.

Want to start investing? Pick one of the many micro-investing platforms, and start putting $20 a week into it.

One of the biggest things that holds us back from achieving our goals is waiting for that perfect silver bullet solution.

Just get started. Start small, start imperfect, start with the knowledge that you might make changes as you go. But start. Twenty dollars a week is $1000 in less than a year.

There’s no nice way to say this, so let’s rip the band aid off – more job losses are expected next year.

They can happen unexpectedly even to people who’ve been doing great work, so you want to make sure you’ve got as much financial cushion as possible to help you through.

The gold standard is to have three months of your core living costs tucked away. That means enough cash to cover three months of your rent or mortgage, power, food, transport. The basics.

If that seems like too big of a goal, just do what you can. If bad luck hits, you’ll be grateful to have anything at all.

KiwiSaver is stuffed full of free cash, but you only get it if you put money in each year.

Miss one year? You can’t put in extra the next, and get what you missed out on previously.

If you put in $1042 each year, the government will match you 50 cents for every dollar, up to $521. It works out to about $20 a week, and the cut off is June. So if you haven’t put in anything into your KiwiSaver so far this financial year, bump it up to $40 a week, and you’ll make it by the end of June deadline.

Except this time, your list is all of your regular payments that go out.

Electricity bill. Streaming services. Insurance. Any regular bill that you pay has a sneaky business model that you need to outfox; they’re counting on you not regularly checking in on them.

Meanwhile, those businesses often offer cheaper deals to get new people to sign up, or have competitors that are undercutting them.

Pick one of these regular bills per day, and do a price check for anyone who’s offering a better rate.

Switch whatever you can, and enjoy the same quality of life for less.

This information is of a general nature and should not be considered individual financial advice.