Get Sorted: There's no time like now

This is an ideal moment to get your money humming for the year. Photo / Supplied

We positively need to seize this moment. It's a particularly good time to get our money humming for the year ahead.

Perhaps it's because we're winding up the holidays and getting back on the job. Or because the stationery and uniforms are all ready and we're waving the kids off to school.

With so many around us kick-starting their yearly routine, we can ride that wave and start fresh with our financial goals. I find the big questions inspiring.

Some well-placed ones can put us in the mindset:

• Are we living the life we want to be?

• What would our ideal situation look like?

• What would we be doing with our time?

It's a fun place to be: surveying the dreamscape. Some of our answers might become projects that last a lifetime!

If you want to capture some of your vision of where you're headed in the short, medium and long terms, Sorted's goal planner can help.

For the year ahead, though, our dreams can't stay in the clouds.

They need to be something that we can really wrap our arms around and lift: funding that overseas trip, slashing our credit card balance, or even getting to next Christmas without having to rely on debt. What are we up for?

We can build a buffer to get ready for the unexpected. Or we can make sure we've got the right insurance in place in case things go pear-shaped.

We can save more, invest more, get ahead more. What do we want to see?

Next up - after charting some destinations of where we're headed this year - we can look into how to get there:

• What will it take to fund that vision?

• What resources would we need?

• What trade-offs could we make to get there quicker?

• What steps can we take next to move closer?

Most goals will take time, and they typically take money. This is what financial planning is meant to be for.

And this is also where budgeting tools like this one can be misunderstood - they can't be just about "making ends meet" or "having it all work out" - they need to be focused on finding as much surplus as possible to fund our goals. The more money we can free up, the faster we can achieve what we want to this year - and in the years to come.

"There's no time like the present," they say. To me there's no time like this time of year to take tangible steps to reach our goals. It's up to us to seize it.

Get Sorted is written by Sorted's resident blogger, Tom Hartmann. Check out the guides and tools from Sorted – brought to you by the Commission for Financial Capability – at sorted.org.nz.