Apps That Help You Keep New Year's Resolutions
Resolutions are easy to make, and, unfortunately, easy to break. We start off strong, following the advice of the experts to keep them small, keep them focused, allow ourselves to make mistakes and share our ups and downs with colleagues, friends and family. We may even drill a little deeper into the science of goal-setting and resolutions, and make detailed plans for reaching our goals or build reward systems for ourselves when we do what we're supposed to.
Monitoring progress toward a goal is a proven way to stay motivated during the weeks and months it may take to cross a big task off the list. With that in mind, here are several apps and online services to help you stay on track to reach your New Year's resolutions -- and none of them will break your resolution to spend more wisely this year.
Health and Fitness Tracking Tools and Apps
Many of us will commit to losing weight and getting fit, right after we sleep off New Years Eve festivities.
MyFitnessPal. Available for free via the Web or as a free smartphone app, MyFitnessPal is a popular diet and fitness tracker used by millions. Its database of foods makes entering meals a snap. You can also use it to monitor your fitness by entering workout details manually or using one of the compatible apps to connect to a Fitbit or other fitness tracking devices. MyFitnessPal also adds some gamification features such as a consecutive day tracker (which monitors how many days in a row you've tracked calories), graphic displays of weight loss over time and community forums for some social motivation.
SparkPeople. SpeakPeople takes MyFitnessPal's recipe and adds a bunch of gamification -- trophies and badges that reward you for certain actions as well as points for tracking. The site includes forums for social motivation, informative blog posts and a "goal board," which is a kind of vision board for weight loss. Popular fitness trackers also connect.
Budget and Finance Apps and Tools
When we aren't resolving to watch our waistlines, we're resolving to watch our budgets and finances.
Mint. Mint.com may be the most popular online budgeting and personal money management tool. It offers a wealth of budgeting and spending tools that take a lot of the drudgery out of paying bills and managing bank, investment and credit accounts -- and a lot of the guesswork, too. You can link all your accounts to Mint and automate everything, or you can manage things manually. The default budget categories are sufficient for most of us, and most transactions automatically feed into the right categories. For those that don't, you tell Mint where they go once, and it's automatic after that.
You Need a Budget. First off, You Need a Budget is not free: After a 34-day trial, the app costs $60 (although it occasionally goes on sale via the Steam Store). Despite not being free, YNAB has developed a cult following that touts its ease of use, method and success at helping users gain control of their money. Unlike Mint and other budgeting apps, YNAB does not automatically pull details from users bank, investment and credit accounts. Data entry is manual and proudly so. YNAB's designers claim that manual entry encourages users to remain closer to their money and better suited to make smarter spending and saving decisions. It's all part of a much larger YNAB money management and budgeting philosophy that promotes frugality and mindfulness. Users love the simplicity of YNAB's smartphone expense and budgeting app, too.
Left to Spend. Left to Spend is much simpler than the services noted above. After you calculate monthly income and expenses (which probably ought to include some saving), the app divides what's left into a daily allowance. Enter what you spend as you spend it, and Left to Spend tells you what you have left -- that's it. No budget categories, no recurrent expenses, just a stark reminder of what you have left as motivation to keep you focused and on track to reach your spending goals. Note, it costs $4.99 to download.
Generic Goal Trackers
Some of us will probably make resolutions that don't involve fitness or money -- read more books perhaps, or stay in touch with friends or family, or work toward getting a promotion. For those resolutions, free-form goal trackers that let you decide the goal and how to track it are the answer.
Joe's Goals. Joe's Goals may not be the prettiest, but what it lacks in shiny buttons and slick user interface it makes up with simplicity and ease of use. Decide on your goals, determine how you will reach them and then track your progress with the site's calendar and diary tools. Simple and elegant and 100 percent free.
Lift. Lift uses Jerry Seinfeld's productivity secret to help you reach your goals. In this approach, you log how often you perform a key behavior, and commit yourself to stick to the routine until you reach the overall goal. For Seinfeld, the big goal was "write more jokes," and the key behavior was "write every day." On days he wrote, the comedian placed a big "X" on a calendar. As the line of "X's" got longer and longer, the motivation to keep the chain intact got stronger and stronger ("Don't break the chain!"). Lift applies this principle to a slick, free app that includes other features such as progress charts and importable plans from experts to help users reach fitness, diet or other goals.
Lars Peterson is an editor for Wise Bread, a personal finance blog that covers financial products and help readers find the best cashback credit cards.
