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heading into the new year it's impossible to avoid talks of goals and resolutions so what are some easy money resolutions that you can knock out in the new year and set yourself up to be even better off in the future I'm Dylan Lewis from the Motley Fool and in this faq we're gonna go through some of the easiest ways you can be better with money and make future you very happy now there are a ton of different surveys asking people what they are focusing on with their new year's resolutions next to dieting and exercising being better with money is almost always one of the most common responses that people offer we're gonna split that out into two different categories saving more and putting your money to work let's start with the first one keeping more money in your pocket the foundation of good personal finance practices is to build a budget and understand where the money is coming in and where the money is going out when it's heading out budget building sounds daunting but it's actually pretty simple take your paycheck and subtract the major non-negotiable expenses you pay regularly like your rent mortgage utilities groceries maybe a car bill and your healthcare costs now anything left over is potential savings and a negative number means there's more going out than coming in now how do you save more the personal finance space is full of articles telling you about the virtues of making your coffee instead of buying it from Starbucks and it's true that's a totally valid way to save but the coffee purchase thing is daily which means to save several hundred dollars you need to change the behavior every single day we're gonna look at a couple quick one-time fixes that will immediately save you big seemingly every company in the world has been transitioning to a subscription model over the past couple years cable phone granola bar companies you name it now businesses are pushing this model because it makes a purchase that you would actively have to make and turns it into something that's automatic now maybe those purchases are truly things that you need but there are probably some that you can either cut down or cut out altogether for example in 2019 I looked at the wireless plan I was on I had an unlimited data plan with one of the big four carriers and for all that I was paying $55 a month which really isn't too bad but there are far cheaper options out there after doing some research I found an NVA no or a mobile virtual network operator basically a company that rents based on cell towers built by the big four companies this company offered a 12 gig monthly plan for $25 a month so I try to no I didn't notice a big drop-off in my service so I switched going from $55 per month for my phone plan to 25 meaning that I was saving over three hundred and fifty dollars per year like that it was crazy the same is probably true for your cable bill most cable companies are happy to offer a nice low deal to get you in the door and then after that first years up all of a sudden your monthly bill starts creeping up if you're in the market where you have options look for the other offers that providers may give and if you don't actually watch too much TV going down to an internet only plan can probably save you about $40 per month or four hundred and eighty dollars per year those are very common recurring payments but there are plenty of others if you're in a house with multiple streaming accounts consider having just one at a time watching the shows you care about and then closing the account and opening another one and if you're looking for more ways to trim take a close look at your credit card statements go through and circle all the recurring expenses you might have totally forgotten that you signed up for cloud storage for 10 dollars a month or that you're being charged monthly access for a publication that you don't actually read and lastly one of my favorite ways to save before you do any online purchasing go to google shopping and see if the product is available for less elsewhere and once you've landed on where you're gonna buy it search for promo codes for that website I've easily saved five or ten dollars on purchases by taking the 30 seconds to do this okay so if you're the average person that's about a thousand dollars in savings over the course of the year right there and if you couple that with routine changes like cooking more and eating out less you could save even more so with your pockets a little bit fuller what should you do there's a little bit of a hierarchy for how to approach having some extra change here's a quick checklist do you have some savings set aside in case something happens we like to call this an emergency fund and the idea is to have enough money around to be able to cover a major expense as it pops up ideally you build it up to three to six months of non-negotiable expenses but $1,000 is a great place to start with some money set aside if you have a retirement account through work focus on that it's pretty common for employers to match contributions up to a specific amount make sure you're contributing at least enough to max out their match it's basically free money as long as you stay at the company long enough for it then do you have high interest debt we're talking about credit card debt or anything over eight to ten percent if you do use the extra money to pay that down as soon as possible after that consider expanding that rainy day fund you've got from a thousand to three to six months of living expenses this is money you'll keep it in your checking or savings account next if you have other lower interest debt you can consider paying it down or focusing on investing more of your money if you go the investing route you can either contribute more to your employer-sponsored retirement account or open a Roth or standard IRA with a firm like Vanguard and buy index funds there's more you can do of course but if you make it to this step you're in pretty great shape and can start thinking about longer-term goals like whether you might want to buy a house in your future or if you want to save up and send your kids to college the path to being better with money will depend on your financial position for some that will be saving up that first thousand dollars others will be focused on destroying their high interest debt and some folks we ready to start investing the big thing is to understand where you are and take action now this was actually kind of a dense video we have all of this and more in written form in our free starter kit it walks you through all things money and how you can save invest and be better off head over to fool.com slash start and you can get that free kit there okay that'll do it for this FAQ video if being better with money is one of your goals go on and like the video with a thumbs up button and if you have cool ways to save it drop them down in the comment section below of course if you haven't already subscribed to the channel to get more content like this from The Motley Fool we're publishing new videos on how to be better with money each week until our next video thanks for tuning in and pull-off