Another year has arrived, and that means a fresh batch of New Year’s resolutions.
Of course, it’s easier to make resolutions than it is to stick with them. By the second week of February, you can expect roughly 80% of New Year’s resolutions to have failed.
But with the right technology, you’ll have much better odds of meeting your goals. Below, we’ll review several digital planners to help you stay organized and motivated as you focus on your New Year’s resolutions.
Best Digital Planners for Wellness
Among the most common New Year’s resolutions are:
- Exercising (more)
- Eating healthier
- Losing weight
And this is where the app 8fit comes in. This digital planner allows you to create personalized workouts and custom meal plans, and then easily keep track of your progress. While a free version of this app is available, you’ll need to upgrade to the Pro version to access most of its features.
If you’re more concerned about diet than exercise, another app you should consider is Cozi. This digital planner is mainly a family organizer, but it can help anyone stick to their personal diet plan. Cozi’s shopping list feature is particularly useful. It lets you:
- Create different lists for different stores
- Transfer recipe ingredients to your grocery lists
- Add items to your lists using voice commands with an Amazon Alexa or Echo device
Best Digital Planners for Saving Money
Reducing frivolous spending and building up savings are also common New Year’s resolutions.
Planning is especially important when it comes to managing your finances. It’s easy to spend a lot of money without realizing it. A new pair of jeans here and a restaurant delivery order there don’t seem like much at the time, but when you see how all this spending adds up, the total amount is often downright shocking.
Mint stands out as one of the most complete budgeting apps. With this app’s daily budget tracker, you can easily figure out what you need to do now in order to save up for the future. Mint can also send you alerts for when:
- You’re exceeding your budgets
- There are upcoming bills
- There are any suspicious transactions
And best of all, most of Mint’s features can be accessed for free.
For a more powerful financial digital planner, check out You Need A Budget (also known as YNAB). YNAB’s signature bank syncing feature allows you to conveniently view all of your account activity from a single dashboard. But this app also includes:
- Real-time transaction updates
- Goal tracking
- Detailed reports
There are also live workshops held daily on topics such as credit card debt, saving money on groceries, and budgeting with a partner.
With all these features, it’s no surprise that you’ll need to pay to use YNAB. The standard charge is $11.99 per month, but you can save $59 by committing to the $84 per year annual plan. According to YNAB, their average user saves $600 in the first two months and over $6,000 in the first year, so it shouldn’t take you long to make up for that cost.
A Digital Planner App for Everything Else
You may have goals that have nothing to do with your health or personal finance. In that case, you should consider a general-purpose digital planner that you can customize for your own unique goals.
For example, Todoist is one of the most popular digital planners, and its features include:
- Task prioritization
- Recurring due dates
- Pre-built project templates
- Progress visualizations
Todoist is available as everything from a Windows desktop program to a Firefox extension to an Apple Watch app. The digital planner also offers integrations for other apps such as Google Calendar and Dropbox.
If none of the other apps in this guide are quite right for your New Year’s resolutions, you should certainly be able to make Todoist work for you.
