It’s that time of year when we compile an outlandish list of ways we will disappoint ourselves over the next few months and call them “New Year’s Resolutions.” There’s a better way to do this, though: setting goals. A goal is something you can measure and something you can take practical steps to achieve. It can be aggressive or imminently attainable, but either way it you must be able to measure progress and map out some reasonable steps to get there. Here are six apps I have found that help me achieve goals in different areas for which I used to set (and fail at) New Year’s Resolutions.
Saving Money – Digit
I found digit a couple years ago and have found it super helpful. It is automated savings based on the status of whatever bank account you tie it to. So it will save bit by bit of your account can afford it and slow down or stop if you cannot. You can tell it to save more or less aggressively, and you can manually deposit money as well. If you are like me and aren’t the most disciplined saver this app is super helpful for emergency savings or saving for a specific expense.
(Oh, and for signing up through the link in this post they’ll give you and me both $5.)
Eating Healthier – MyFitnessPal
I’m in my mid 30s and I love to eat. That means that about 5 years ago I realized that my desk-sitting, restaurant-eating, coke-drinking lifestyle was really sticking with me. Mostly as love handles. In talking to my over-40 friends it seems this condition, known as “getting pudgy,” doesn’t resolve itself. So I had to figure out how to fix it. MyFitnessPal is an app (and website) that allows users to track all the food they eat, set goals for caloric intake, and track calories burned. It syncs with other fitness apps (Apple, fitbit, etc.) so that you can see the net intake of calories as well. Mostly it is a source of eating accountability as you see shocking numbers attached to donuts and cookies and coke and whatnot. At the very least it has been helpful in keeping my own bad habits in check.
Reading – Goodreads
Goodreads is like a playground for book lovers. It allows you to set goals, track your progress, interact with other readers, make wish lists, discover new titles or authors, leave ratings and reviews, see how other review books, and it even connects directly with Kindle if you’re into that sort of thing. If you want to read more books, read more from a certain author, read more of a specific genre, or some other goal Goodreads is the ideal app to help with that. It is both fun and useful and an ideal environment for those who want to be better readers.
Investing Money – Acorns
I am not an investor. I have a loose idea of what the stock market is and no idea how it works (except that you should never panic and always leave your money invested . . . right?). So when I ran across Acorns it seemed like the perfect place to get started for a novice like me. It takes whatever amount you want to invest, either a little bit at a time or big chunks, either one time deposits or recurring, and puts it into an investment portfolio on your behalf. You can give direction what kind of portfolio (small business, growth stocks, etc.) and you can customize it to your preferences as well. The kicker for someone like me is that Acorns will automatically accrue and invest your “spare change” by rounding up any amount you spend on approved debit or credit cards to the nearest dollar and investing those little bits. So that means, just by rounding up and putting a few dollars a week into my account I can easily invest $50-$100 monthly. It’s not an enormous amount, but it ads up and it’s $50-$100 more per month than I was investing before.
(Oh, and for signing up through the link in this post they’ll give you and me both $5.)
Fitness & Excercise – PushUps and Running Log
There are innumerable useful fitness and exercise apps. The key to finding the right one for you has little to do with the app and more to do with your persistence and consistency in using it. These are two that I use to track my progress in exercise goals month by month. These are simple apps that are basically for recording progress, almost like an exercise journal. There are others that offer plans, goals, maps, routes, and GPS tracking. Those are great too if you are looking for a more full service app. Again, the key to fitness apps is using them consistently.
