Week 4 of Round-up of Feng Shui Your Financial House

I have always preferred sunrises to sunsets, the start of journeys to the end, and the prologue of a book to its epilogue. 

I am in love with potential, with what lurks over the horizon, with opportunity yet to be spent, with fresh starts and swelling tree buds.

I love the New Year.

While every culture has its tying up of loose ends and cleansing rituals, the Japanese, already big fans of daily ritual cleaning, really go to town for New Year’s. The goal is to enter the year as you wish to live the entire year i.e., debt-free, with a clean house, not working, hanging out with friends and family, and eating lots of mochi.

All of this preparation meant a shit ton of work for the women.

It’s a lot of work to cook three days’ worth of auspicious food so as not to have to toil at New Year’s, not to mention scrubbing the house from top to bottom. 

Being Okinawan, I’m sure my family’s preparations did not live up to Naichi (mainland Japan) standards, though we did make lots of mochi. However imperfectly practiced, it was my favorite holiday as a kid. 

I loved having a fresh start.

Being a portfolio manager reinforced this love affair.

As a professional investor, the only true respite I had from being marked to market was on New Year’s day, when the prior year’s performance had closed out, and the new year’s darby had yet to start.

It was the only day I could relax completely because my performance was not being measured.

(This is a bit of false construction because performance is cumulative and must also be looked at in rolling periods, but the calendar was the default time period bogey used by clients. It was my psychological truth, however.)

So as the year comes to a close and the new year has yet to start, take a moment to review the past year’s money wins and losses. 

Scrub yourself clean of guilt, shame, or grief about how you handled your finances in 2022.

Prepare yourself for the opportunities presented by 2023. Picture what you will do differently next year and seal the deal by doing the following:

Write a letter to yourself from your future self. 

Have the self you imagine yourself to be on December 31, 2023, tell you all about your successes, the shifts in self-concept you underwent, the challenges you overcame, the unexpected bounties you received, and how you accomplished the goals you set at the end of 2022.

Then use futureme.org to email that letter to yourself a year from now. 

By this time next year, you’ll learn how your imagined 2023 stacks up against your lived 2023, and I guarantee you will be the wiser for it.

May the New Year bring you all the blessings you could wish for.

Happy New Year! 

Here’s round 4 of Feng Shui Your Financial House for the New Year, in case you missed any.

22. Save Yourself Financial Grief at Tax Time by Prepping Now

23. Teach Your Kids About Money, Don’t Lie, or Cheat Your Daughters

24. Check Your Social Security Contributions Even if You’re Young

25. Your Money Beliefs Were Gifted to You

26. Learn About Investing Without Platitudes or Talking Head B.S.

27. How to Partner Your Values with Your Money

28. Your Money Gut Is Wiser Than You Think