As a business owner, most of the goals you set may be centred around your company. Whether you realise it or not, reviewing your targets, assessing improvement, and ensuring the security of your business’s future may often take precedence over your personal ambitions.

Especially after the turbulent few years our world has endured, it makes sense not to take your business’s success for granted. As such, you may routinely set new objectives for your company, as well as celebrate how far you’ve come already.

Nevertheless, remembering that your personal goals matter too is vital – not just for your own wellbeing, but for the health and happiness of your family too.

So, as 2024 approaches, here are four financial new year resolutions entrepreneurs can set, and why they’re important.

1. Identify clear personal finance targets and work towards them

As a business owner, you will appreciate the importance of goal-setting. Without clear objectives, it’s difficult for a company, or the team that runs it, to grow.

Yet, amid the busy day-to-day running of your enterprise, you might have sidelined your personal financial goals.

So, this new year, perhaps it’s time to start thinking about the following personal finance factors, or to revisit them if applicable:

• The amount you’d like to extract from your business, and how, every year
• The wealth you’ll need to take from your company to support yourself and your family when you retire
• Building a stable pot of personal wealth to improve your financial stability outside of your business.

Setting clear, precise targets based on these elements could enable you to take effective steps towards building greater personal financial stability in 2024.

2. Stop procrastinating over your retirement plans

Even if your retirement seems like it is miles away, laying out plans for life after work may be a great resolution to add to your list this January.

After all, as we’ve discussed in previous insights, planning how and when you’d like to retire can take years – especially when you have not just your personal plans, but the future of your business to consider, too.

If you’re planning to sell your company to fund your retirement, it may help to start working out how much you’ll need to receive from a sale. Plus, discussing the prospect of this transaction with financial professionals may improve your chances of success in the future.

Alternatively, if you’re planning to hand control of the business to the next generation or another key person, instead of a sale, you will be relying on your personal wealth to fund your lifestyle after you pass the torch.

Either way now is the time to begin preparing for this milestone – even if you feel you have plenty of time left to figure it out.

Sadly, it’s all too easy to procrastinate over your retirement plans, especially if you are a young business owner. If you find yourself putting this resolution on the back burner, working with a financial planner can help (more on this in number four).

3. Dust off your bucket list

The start of a new year is the perfect time to revisit what means the most to you – and for many business owners, the non-stop grind can often eclipse any exciting plans you may have made for your life outside of work.

Indeed, although revisiting your bucket list doesn’t sound like a “financial new year resolution”, taking time out of your schedule to put some exciting plans in motion may be more constructive than you realise.

For instance, if you and your family have always wanted to take a trip around New Zealand for a month or so, it’s time to take this plan out of the “hypothetical” and into the “practical”.

Even if the trip won’t happen for another two or three years, sketching out a time frame, and how much it might cost, may remind you that time can simply pass us by unless we put our ideas into action.

What’s more, having your bucket list at the forefront of your mind throughout the year – for example, by sticking the top three items up on your fridge, or setting them as your screen saver – could prompt you to continue working towards them financially.

This way, you and your family may come out of “autopilot” and begin actioning your most treasured goals in line with what you can afford, both in time and money.

4. Seek the guidance of a financial planner

Juggling the life of a business owner with being a spouse, a parent, or any other identifying factor outside of work, can be hard.

Things are no different where money is concerned. Even with the best of intentions, you may have taken your eye off the ball of your personal finances when caught up in the daily business of keeping your company afloat.

There’s no doubt that 2024 will bring its own unique set of opportunities and challenges, just like every year that came before it.

So, if you are tired of being on the back foot when it comes to personal finance, a helpful new year resolution might be to seek the support you need from an unbiased financial professional. Working with a financial planner can help you achieve everything you’ve read about in this article and more.

Here at iQ Financial, we’re not interested in one-off transactional relationships – we intend to strike up long-term partnerships with clients who we believe can gain significant personal wealth from working with us.

Are you turning over a new leaf this new year? We’re here to help you see these resolutions through. Email us at clients@iqf.ie, or call 353 71 915 5560.

Please note

This article is for information only. It does not constitute advice.

It describes the financial planning services that iQ Financial can offer to you. Financial planning services are not regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.