How to Prepare for a Successful New Year

How to Prepare for a Successful New Year by popular Dallas life and style blog, Glamorous Versatility: image of a pregnant woman standing outside and wearing a pastel stripe romper.

I can’t believe it is almost the end of 2019 and end of this decade! WOW! Time has flown and I am just so grateful for each day I am here and thriving. At the end of the year I always take the time to review the year, assess how the year went, and prepare for a successful new year ahead.  It helps me know exactly what I need to work on and things that are going well.  Doing this has helped me stay productive and continue to do better than the year before.

To help you guys start off with a successful new year I want to share tips on how to prepare for the new year.

How to Prepare for a Successful New Year

Finances

With the year ending it is time to close your budget books down for the year and start a new budget for 2020.  This is something that Rick and I do together in our family business meeting.  We analyze the year to dates on every aspect of our budget.  How much income we brought in and how much we spent on each category.   Brace yourself because this will be very eye opening, and let you know exactly what you need to cut back on.  I am already bracing myself for that eating out YTD! Ugh! We then also compare it to the previous year.  By comparing it lets us know how are we improving year over year, and how we need to do better in the upcoming year.  Don’t beat yourself up if you aren’t where you wanted to be when you see your YTDs. January 1 is a new year and new opportunity to do better.

If you don’t already have a budget, make that your goal for 2020.  To hit your financial goals a financial budget is crucial! If you don’t have a budget you can still analyze the year.  Log into your bank account.  Most banks categorize your expenses and this will help you get an idea of where you stand without having a budget.

Once we see how we did this helps us create our 2020 financial goals. Again, don’t be discouraged if it wasn’t a great financial year.  This could be the set up for a better upcoming year.

Some of our goals: Double how much we save, pay off the rest of our debt (outside of our home), consistently give our boys allowances and teach healthy money practices (y’all I forget to do allowances), and invest more. 

Decluttering

Going into the new year this is a good time to declutter your life.  You do not need to bring that extra baggage into a new year.  While yes you should take this time to purge your home of items that can be trashed and donated, I more so mean declutter your life.

Email – I am that person that feels out of control if I have 5 unread emails, so that isn’t a major struggle.   What is a struggle is how unorganized my inbox is.  I am using this time to clean up my email box, delete, and organize. Oh and UNSUBSCRIBE! Don’t take those junk emails into the new year!

Photos – My project for this holiday break is to go through my phone.  Delete unused apps and delete my thousands and thousands of pictures.

Subscriptions – I am tired of seeing $7 dollars going out my bank account for miscellenous subscriptions.  While some may be legitimate take the time to go through it and see what you actually need and cancel what you don’t.

Mail – While you are purging your home go through all your unopened mail and make a game plan for everything.  Whether it is throwing away or taking action.  Don’t leave anything not handled.

Planner

I live and breathe by my planner, it is the only way I keep this family running and this business in check.  I go through each month and look over what I had going on. Then analyze what served its purpose and what I may need to stop going forward.  I am the queen of crowding my schedule, and it is important to assess your schedule to ensure that you are doing tasks that make sense and help you in the long run.

This is also a good time to go through and make sure you have all your important dates that you know of set up in your planner.  Start the year of being in control of your time.  You can see how I organize my planner here.

You can shop my planner essentials below. 

Business Audit

This is still somewhat new to me because really my business took off pretty quickly.  I went from running my blog as a hobby to it being a full-time business. It is so important that I am always growing as an entrepreneur.  I am very much still learning on how to run my business and how to make it more efficient, so doing a business audit is important.

Profits/Loss – We hired on an accountant this year that manages my business accounting.  We have a meeting set to go over my business expenses and how much my business earned.  Since it is the end of the year you will want to start thinking about filing your business taxes.  Ask yourself do you have everything you need to file? Start accounting for receipts, unpaid invoices etc.

Reviewing Top Posts – Running a blog its important to see what does your community like seeing and what aren’t they a fan of.  I check out my Google Analytics and see what were my top and lowest posts of the year.

Top Products – One thing I love about sharing my life is the items I used and wear on a daily basis. With that in my affiliate portal I will analyze what was the top items sold so I can see what products you like seeing from me.

Create business goals – After you have analyzed your business establish goals for the new year.  What are 3 things you want to accomplish in your business? What are the areas of improvement? Regularly check in on these goals to ensure that you are working on them over the course of the next year.

Business Operations – How is your business running? I am all about working smarter not harder. To be honest this is the biggest area of improvement for me.  I know I can be running my business more efficiently.  From my billing process to email blast.  This is the biggest area that I will be tackling next year.

Some of my business goals are to get an assistant, launch my new website, and get consistent on our Youtube Channel

Self Assessment

Whew…this should really be on the top of this post, because this is so necessary. Take time as you are preparing on the new year just to do a self-check.  How are you? How did this year effect you? What areas need improvement?  What areas did you thrive in?  These may seem like easy questions, but if we are being real with ourselves sometimes it is hard to be truly honest.

Look at your lifestyle, health, mental, relationships, professional, and emotional.  Write out the highs and lows of each category. I typically write this in the planner I use so I can reference it back.

Here’s where it gets real, create actionable goals. I know sometimes this can  be hard to do for ourselves.  Share this with some accountability partners to help keep you on track this year.

Recharge – While I love going after my goals,  sometimes you have to recharge and give yourself a minute before you try to tackle the year.  Depending on how your year went you may need to rest mentally before you take action. Don’t be afraid to give yourself time if it is needed.

My Personal Goals: Consistently workout during my pregnancy and after, drink more water, and read through the entire bible.

Relationships

Take time to even assess the relationships in your life.  I am not saying axe people out your life, but how is each relationship you have? If there’s something you could improve on, because I am not saying start pointing the finger at every person in your life. God will work on them, use this as time to assess can you be a better wife, friend, daughter, co-worker, mom. Think about how the relationships in your life have thrived and struggle, and see what you could have done better.

Now…if you have been holding onto a toxic relationship for some years then maybe this is the time to make some choices.  But I will let y’all be the judge of that.

How to Prepare for a Successful New Year by popular Dallas life and style blog, Glamorous Versatility: image of a pregnant woman standing outside and wearing a pastel stripe romper.

What’s nice about a new year is that it is never too late to make a change.  Remember that after the newness of the year wears off to still keep up all the goals that you have put in place.

I hope that 2020 is year of thriving and continuing to be the best version of yourself. CHEERS TO A NEW DECADE!

What are some things you’re doing to have a successful new year? Let me know in a comment below!

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