It’s a new decade! That means it’s the perfect time to take a hold of your finances and set yourself on the path to financial wellness. Here’s 5 steps you can take today to set you up for financial wellness tomorrow.

1. Understand where you’re at today

Believe it or not, this is the most important step in pursuing financial wellness in the New Year. Take a few minutes to sit down and truly assess where you’re at. You might be surprised to find areas that you could improve on. Take note of any debts you have. Take note of about how much you spend each month in comparison to how much you earn. Here’s a sneaky one: pay attention to your automatic charges each month, particularly for things like Netflix or Spotify. These things are easy to overlook. Make sure you’re not still paying for something you thought you had stopped a long time ago.

2. Create a budget

Now that we have an understanding for what’s really going on behind the scenes, let’s make a budget. Now you may be thinking “budgets are complicated” or “that’ll take too much time”, but the truth is a budget is simply a plan. As a matter of fact, you can jot down a budget on a sheet of paper if you’d like. There’s no real format for what a budget has to look like. It’s a plan on how you intend to spend money for the month. The process is fairly simple! First, take note of how much money you have coming in every month (after taxes). After that, record your big, routine monthly expenses (your car payment, mortgage, power bill etc.). For things that may change from month to month, like your power bill, it’s okay to estimate using your past bills. Once we have an understanding of where our regular payments are, we can look at any debt that might have built up. We’ll talk more about this is #4. From there you can map out the rest of your expenses. How much do you want to spend on groceries this month? How much do you want to spend going to movies, football games, etc. How much do you want to spend buying clothes for yourself and your family? Planning how much to spend each month helps limit spending that may be affecting your financial wellness.

3. Track your spending

Remember: this is just a plan. Life happens. Tires get popped. Kids need stuff for school projects. There’s no way to account for all of life’s mysteries. That being said, having a plan allows us to know where we over spent, and make adjustments for it in the future. As the month goes along, track your spending to make sure you’re on track for your financial goals. It’s okay to have to adjust your budget. The hope is that eventually we’ll get to a place where we can have a pretty decent prediction of how much we’re actually spending month to month. That may take some trial and error.

4. Identity high interest debt & pay it off

This is a big one! All kinds of debt are different. Some build up slowly, while others can grow quickly and dig a hole in your wallet. It’s important to know which debt is which. Identify the debts with the highest interest rates. It’s typically best to pay those off first.

5. Stick to the plan

Now you’ve got a plan for financial wellness in 2020! The only thing left now is to follow it. Remember: it doesn’t have to be complicated. It just has to be something that works for you.