What was your biggest win last month?

(*Warning...this is a longer post than my usual. I wasn't planning to post anything like this but after doing my new-ish daily habit this morning (which I started on 12/17/25), I thought I would share my experience).

January is over and Hello February!

Many people made goals at the beginning of the year. How did yours go?

My take on goals...I personally don't like them!

After reading the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, my perspective on goals Completely Changed!

(If you haven't read this book, it is one of my Top 5 Books which has impacted my life. You can find it here: https://amzn.to/49PJDAk)

The overall message I got from this book: replace goals with Habits (and Yes, there is a difference.)

What has been my new habit you ask? I'm glad you asked.

It is the dreaded "B" word...

At least that's what my wife and I have called it ever since we got married. It has probably been the #1 source of contention in our marriage:

Budgeting! (There. I said it 😬)

Last year I postponed doing our taxes waaaaay too long. I filed an extension and Finally got them done...in JULY! Please keep in mind we have to file Business and Personal Taxes so they take a long time to do. But still....July?! After this chaos, I promised myself I wouldn't let that happen again. But did I?

August rolled around. I didn't work on Taxes. 😬

September....Nothing. 😭

October...Nada. ‼️

November...Zilch. 🧨

My problem was, whenever I sat down to reconcile our accounts and budget, I realized I needed to budget first. For our family, we have a lot of transactions each week. It would take me a solid hour to put each transaction into its proper budget category (even with budgeting software on a weekly basis) and then...I was out of time. My kids would need my attention. My wife would need something. Our dogs made a mess. I never had 1+ hours to work on budgeting and taxes in a given day. 😭

On 12/17/25, I told myself I was going to catch up on everything in our budget and get all of our taxes done before 1/15/26. But this time it was going to be different. It wasn't a goal, but a HABIT. Instead of budgeting weekly, I was going to budget DAILY. This change has made ALL the difference!

For me, as a Habit, I've found I can always dedicate 10-15 minutes for budgeting in the mornings after my workout, before my kids wake up. This is just the time that has worked for me and my situation and I know I need to do it right after I workout. The interesting thing, by setting aside 10-15 minutes each day, it has been more than enough time to put the previous days transactions into their correct category and I've been able to use the remaining time for budget planning like:

What big expenses do we have coming up? (in our case, a used car)
What can we do to get ahead? (in our case, which stocks should we buy next)
What are some household items we could sell to improve our situation?
How can I make sure my wife and I are on the same page with spending? (I am happy to report, we haven't had a budget related argument in over a month!)

Instead of feeling like our budget is always on fire, a huge hassle to deal with, and a major source of contention, our budget has turned into a great planning tool and has actually brought us a little bit of peace. We've been able to realize when certain purchases needed to wait until February. We've been able to realize we didn't need as much as we thought in certain categories and swapped them into others. We've had actually two very good conversations while on walks where we talked about the budget and we left happy with each other! And the "icing on the cake": (this is a little embarrassing to admit but...) we actually ended up with extra money in our account as of yesterday. This is huge as it's probably been at least a year since it has happened! 😎

I'm also happy to report, our 2025 taxes are DONE and if my accountant was to ask us for our tax report for January, I could send it to him within 30 seconds!

This post was to talk about Habits and the incredible power behind them but if you are looking for a way to get back on track with your budget, I highly recommend YNAB (You Need a Budget). We've used it since 2019. It is subscription based BUT you can pay either monthly or annually (cheaper option) and the first 34 days are free! Plus if you join using my link below, you get a free month!

Link to YNAB:

https://ynab.com/referral/?ref=mDJwBNJlaA2OxYYN&utm_source=customer_referral

If you made it this far, thank you for reading and I can't wait to hear what new habit you start doing.

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