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Your money resolutions for 2025 — how to control your finances and cut stress

Your money resolutions for 2025 — how to control your finances and cut stress
Warren Ingram
By Warren Ingram
19 Jan 2025
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Changing your financial situation from one that is giving you sleepless nights to one that is building wealth and security is easier than you think, provided you implement a few simple basics first.

Starting 2025 correctly will be very helpful in making progress towards your financial goals. One of the best ways to get started is to develop a simple plan for your year.

This plan should include some basics about how you spend and invest and, crucially, determining what is most important to you. Money troubles are very stressful, but you can take control of them and reduce your stress if you take the right actions now.

Set your goals


I speak to hundreds of people every year about their money. Those in a great financial position all share one attribute: they have a clear idea of where they are going and they control their money.

Setting goals helps you take control of your money. Many people who struggle with their finances are in a repetitive cycle of spending all their monthly income and trying to keep pace with their debt repayments.

Anyone who has planned a long-distance journey will tell you that having a route map is essential. It starts with the final destination and is broken up into a series of shorter trips that combine to get you to the final destination.

Your financial journey is no different; knowing where you are going is the only way to achieve your financial goals. That means you need to set some small annual milestones to ensure you can prioritise what is most important to you.

This allows you to allocate your time and money to the things that will positively affect you and your loved ones. It also helps you to stop spending on things that are not important to you.

Some examples of smaller goals include:

  • Establish or optimise your emergency fund;

  • Save for a major purchase like a car or a deposit on a home;

  • Allocate a monthly amount to your holiday fund;

  • Increase your monthly savings; and

  • Pay off your credit card.


Budgeting basics


Setting up your budget for the year is really helpful in determining how much money you can allocate to necessities, savings as well as fun.

One of the best ways to develop a budget is to review your expenses for the past three months to see what you have spent. You can average out the expenses, since some months might be costlier.

Reviewing your previous months’ expenses also gives context to your budget. For example, if you spend R35,000 per month, it is not realistic to plan for monthly future expenditures of R25,000. The drop is too big to be sustainable.

Instead, plan to reduce your expenses by R1,000 for three months. If that works, you can aim to reduce your expenses by another R1,000. A gradual reduction is much easier to maintain than a radical change.

If you struggle to save, try setting up automatic debit orders for your savings. For example, allocate a monthly amount to your fun, retirement and emergency funds. If you have short-term debts, consider paying them off as fast as possible to free up some breathing space in your budget.

No investment is guaranteed to grow faster than your credit card interest. Paying off your credit card is a great way to take control of your money and your life.

Are you investing wisely?


Take stock of your investments. That means reviewing the diversification of your portfolio to ensure that you are not too heavily invested in stocks that did well in 2024. It is essential to know that last year’s winners are rarely next year’s winners.

You should also have a good spread of local and international investments. Although the US stock market was an absolute star performer over the past few years, it is not guaranteed to continue. Another market might deliver better returns in the next five years. That does not mean you should sell all your US investments; instead, ensure you have a globally diversified portfolio that includes the local markets.

Common sense and focus


Money is not as complicated as people think. You can achieve financial success with some common sense, setting goals and staying focused on what is most important to you.

Ignore the big predictions from the experts – they have been proven wrong more often than not. Stay calm when the political news gets scary. The world is uncertain and a little unstable.

That instability can provide opportunities to buy great assets at a low price if other people are panicking.

Above all, stop drifting from month to month, take a bit of time to set a direction and start working towards your goals. DM

Warren Ingram is a certified financial planner and the co-founder of Galileo Capital.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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