{"id":329,"date":"2024-01-08T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-08T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moneywithkatie.com\/new-years-squeeze\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T18:53:29","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T18:53:29","slug":"new-years-squeeze","status":"publish","type":"essays","link":"https:\/\/moneywithkatie.com\/essays\/new-years-squeeze\/","title":{"rendered":"New Year\u2019s Squeeze"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The last day of the year always seems to carry with it a vague, buzzing pressure. <\/p>\n

What begins in late November and early December as an eager invitation to a blank slate slowly mutates into something else as January 1 looms large. It\u2019s a little like when you crack open a fresh journal\u2014the Notebook That\u2019s Going to Change Everything<\/span>\u2122<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u2014committed to using nicer handwriting this time, only to sit there frozen over the page, pen hovering, nervously humming Natasha Bedingfield\u2019s \u201cUnwritten.\u201d (Just me?)<\/p>\n

For me, the vibe always shifts a day or two into the holiday break. I skidded into our company\u2019s off-week this year frazzled and overwhelmed, my sanity duct-taped together after a few challenging months, wondering, How am I going to fix everything that\u2019s wrong with my life in the next seven days so I can have a clean slate for 2024?<\/em> <\/p>\n

There were complicated drafts I\u2019d been procrastinating on, lingering emails with questions about the future I wasn\u2019t ready to answer yet, and, of course, the neurotic litany of goal-setting and reflection processes I subject myself to every year (whether this is driven by narcissism, self-loathing, or a dizzying cocktail of both, we\u2019ll never know\u2014that\u2019s showbiz, baby). <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
>
\n \u201c<\/span>Planning to be somebody and being somebody are different jobs.\u201d<\/span>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n
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Regardless, the promise of a tabula rasa in the future<\/em> feels like purification. But when you\u2019re staring that promise in the face? When you open the glistening, unblemished page in your new $29 Moleskine and it\u2019s time to write your first entry? Planning to be somebody and being<\/em> somebody are different jobs.<\/p>\n

Part of the voluntary shame of this process is the pesky memory of all the first pages that came before: the budgets carefully manicured then discarded the moment we discovered our desires didn\u2019t fit inside them, the earnest devotion to reasonable screen time limits bypassed in mindless, repetitive 15-minute increments, the pledges to meditate every morning promptly abandoned as soon as the first frantic 6am Slack message of the new year arrived. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s humiliating and endearing, the way we return to the altar of our goals and plans, ready to suffer our penance and re-up. The cynics among us gave up on this ritual long ago, but the naive optimists? We can\u2019t help ourselves.<\/p>\n

To call my typical end-of-year review process \u201cachievement-oriented\u201d would be generous. It\u2019s been focused\u2014narrowly and obsessively\u2014on money and career progress since 2020. I\u2019d go through the motions of setting personal goals (screen time! meditation! books!), but my heart wasn\u2019t in it. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d I\u2019d write in the spiritual or family or relationships sections, \u201cMaybe I\u2019ll call my parents more. Anyway, back to Forbes 30 Under 30!\u201d I\u2019d write, reanimated and foaming at the mouth over a meaningless list and its honorees, many of whom were cautionary tales so possessed by ambition that their drive turned them into felons<\/span><\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While the self-imposed pressure to make the annual turnover meaningful is uncomfortable, I think we feel it because we accurately judge the stakes to be high. We might get a fresh start every year, but our years are not unlimited. The desire to do right by ourselves is natural; healthy, even. <\/p>\n

Part of this onerous ritual for me each year involves rereading all of my journal entries from the last 365 days. Since my birthday is on December 22, I get the double-whammy of turning another year older right before the calendar changes over (I like to think I was early to Capricorn season because, well, you know). It\u2019s a valuable exercise to digest a full year\u2019s worth of the things I felt strongly enough to write about in the moment, because themes tend to emerge.<\/p>\n

During my review of 2023\u2019s goals, I noticed something: At the beginning of the year, I had intended to avoid corners of the internet that made me feel shitty, like Elon\u2019s radioactive social experiment. I had intended to start my day more thoughtfully and to avoid catastrophizing and spiraling. I had intended to spend more time making things, and less time consuming them. Compared to my financial and career goals, these were footnotes. Asterisks. On your way to making a million dollars, <\/em>I seemed to write, can you also cut down on doom-scrolling?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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>
\n \u201c<\/span>The desire to do right by ourselves is natural; healthy, even.\u201d<\/span>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n
\n

So imagine my surprise in reading back through the journal and finding entries about my phone creating anxiety, waffling about how to start my day (\u201cKinda wanna work out, kinda wanna just start working, I don\u2019t know. Maybe I\u2019ll shower;\u201d girl, just pick one<\/em>), and\u2014what else?\u2014some good, old-fashioned spiraling. <\/p>\n

This was, strangely, comforting. It was like staring at a roadmap to myself. Oh,<\/em> I thought, I\u2019m sitting here making lists of income and net worth goals, when the real needle movers are right in front of me<\/em>. On a day-to-day basis, there were strikingly few entries about money. For how much emphasis the subject received in my goals, it was almost entirely absent from my journal entries. There was plenty of hand wringing about my creative process and business decisions and long-term dreams, but the dollars and cents of it all never really entered the plot. <\/p>\n

Maybe it\u2019s because it had<\/em> been a focus for so many years that there wasn\u2019t much else to say, or maybe it\u2019s because once you reach a certain satiation point, further focus feels beside the point. Or maybe it\u2019s that the dollars and cents of it all were never<\/em> really the point. <\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take a close reading to reveal that brute-forcing my way through more work, rather than creating the space necessary to make that work good<\/em>\u2014might\u2019ve been self-defeating. (After all, as I reviewed my 2023 treatise, manic in its loftiness, I couldn\u2019t ignore that I\u2019d met neither the net worth nor the income goals I had set. All that emphasis\u2014and for what? Even the approach that prioritized financial and career success above all else didn\u2019t produce the intended results\u2014financial or otherwise\u2014so maybe the approach wasn\u2019t serving me as much as I had thought.) <\/p>\n

Of course, I\u2019m still Money with Katie\u2014so that\u2019s not to say I don\u2019t have any<\/em> financial or career goals for 2024. Just that their weight has been right-sized among the things that I\u2019d historically ignored, the things that clearly had a larger influence on my day-to-day satisfaction than the second decimal point of a savings rate or an arbitrary net worth threshold.<\/p>\n

And I don\u2019t know\u2014maybe it\u2019s the optimism <> narcissism cocktail talking, but something tells me my approach this year might be the one that Finally Changes Everything.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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How have your goals changed this year? Send us an email at moneywithkatie@morningbrew.com<\/span><\/a> and let us know.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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