I don’t make New Years’ resolutions anymore.  When I was younger, I used to…and they would break by March at the latest.  Of course, I made all the same ones everyone else does: lose weight, stop smoking, get in better financial shape…. but no more.  Around the personal finance blogosphere people are making their New Years’ resolutions.  Instead, I have a PLAN.

There’s a huge difference between having a plan and having a resolution.  There’s also a big difference between a goal and a plan.  At first glance, it doesn’t sound like much difference in definition among a resolution, a goal, and a plan.  But the devil is in the details…here it is all about connotation.

A New Years’ resolution is something that sounds good when you say it at the beginning of the year…and falls by the wayside as winter melts into spring and blooms into summer.

A goal is a dream you intend to realize, but so often lacks combats boots to march through the muck and mire that life loves to throw at you to test your mettle.

A plan is the five paragraph op-order that spells out everything needed to get it done!  The details have been worked out until they are buff.  The contingency scenarios have been thought of for when you get ambushed by life’s little examples of Murphy’s Law.  And if you end up being more successful than you initially figured..that’s in the plan also!

So I am not bothering with a New Years’ resolution anymore.  I prefer to make solid plans to get to that goal I dream about.  So, what’s the plan for 2008?  I’ve already mapped out the year ahead of us financially :)