(This column was first published on Value Research Online.)

Someone you know has surely made the New Year’s resolution to work out more regularly. Most of you would probably know more than one person to has made this resolution, almost as many as those who would have resolved to eat healthier. The first few weeks of any new year are the best times for people in the business of fitness. Most of us do all we can to take care of our health in the new year, for the first couple of weeks at least. After that, it’s back the same old story of waking up late, eating out more and generally procrastinating on our resolutions. The gym membership stays unused, the green tea gets ignored and the resolutions are forgotten till another new year approaches us.

But, to a certain extent, health-related resolutions getting broken is almost a given. We’ll make them again next year, and the year after that as well. Unfortunately, we treat health-related resolutions the same way we treat their financial counterparts, which can have a detrimental effect on our finances. This, we shouldn’t do, because following financial resolutions is easier than any other resolutions.

With that said, when it comes to finance-related resolutions, the only thing one needs to do is go back to the basics. You don’t need any complicated resolutions to ensure good financial health. You can easily get by by resolving to do a few basic things:

  • Save more by monitoring and controlling your expenses
  • Don’t let the market movements govern your investments
  • Start investing to save taxes at the beginning of the financial year itself
  • Make sure your long-term investments are in equity to help you beat inflation
  • Don’t mix insurance with investment, keep things simple

These are the only five financial resolutions you need to follow in 2016. You can follow them every year, year after year. These resolutions never get old. They’re simple investment tenets that have held many investors in good stead.

Follow these finance-related resolutions because they’re easier to implement, they will give you quantifiable results and the best part is that you don’t even need to wake up early in the morning to follow them.