This is the seventh of nine basic steps for setting effective New Year’s goals to get out of debt.  You can share your debt resolution with others here.

In this series of posts, we’ve been covering the basic steps that you can take to get out of debt.  Most of these have been discrete actions taken because they have direct bearing on your finances.  Step 7 is different.

Regular readers of our blog know that we like to talk about the psychology of debt, and how that’s often used against us by lenders.

Here’s a psychological trick that you can use to your benefit:  tell friends about your goal.  Why?  Studies show that if you tell other people about your goal, you’re more likely to stick to it and have success.  Consider it positive peer pressure.

• A 1973 study by Pallak, Cook, and Sullivan asked people to minimize energy use.  Those who made a public commitment to do so and have their names published in the newspaper reduced their energy consumption by 10-20%.  Those who made a private commitment or no commitment did not reduce their consumption at all.
• A 2007 study by Richard Wiseman of over 3,000 people attempting to achieve new year’s resolutions found that for men, goal setting improved success by 22% and for women, 10% were more likely to be successful when they had the encouragement of others.

We love the second study.  When you tell other people, your chance of success goes up by 10%.  That’s a pretty good impact.

So this year, tell your friends about your goal and ask them to check in with you periodically to see how you’re doing with your goal.

Tune in for tomorrow’s post when we’ll discuss how your family and friends can help you be more successful.

See you then.

Hope you’re having a great new year.

Scott Crawford is CEO of DebtGoal.com, a do-it-yourself system for getting out of debt and lowering your interest costs.  DebtGoal.com incorporates all of the techniques discussed in this post and can help users understand and get visibility to and manage their debt finances.

Tags: debt, Debt Paydown, debt reduction, DebtGoal, Goal, goal debt, New Year goal, New Year resolution, resolution, Setting goals, SMART goal

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 2:44 am and is filed under Credit Card, Debt Management, DebtGoal, Paying Down Debt. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.