January has long held a monopoly on fresh starts, but it’s actually only one of two great hinge points in your year
For centuries, in England the legal and financial year started on the 25th of March—Lady Day, the day marking the annunciation of the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary, which fitted a turnover of the year as it was 9 months before Christmas and also close to the Spring Equinox and Easter. In fact, we only started to, ahem, align more closely with Europe on the start of the new tax year when we finally adopted the Gregorian Calendar in 1750, a mere 169 years or so after those hasty Continental Catholics.
If you think the year marker clicks over on Jan 1, then that rest period after Yule and all of those New Year’s resolutions, ambitious fitness plans and financial goal setting/revision work dominate our thinking, and we heartily encourage all of that in that bit of downtime.
As we are human, a lot of the steam has gone out of that by February—which is fine, we’re all cracking on with making our numbers by then anyway. Yet there is another, often overlooked, opportunity for doing some serious re-calibrating and long-term goal financial checking that may be just as useful: the final four months of the year, which we might call Year B. Let’s see how.
Read ten books? Yes please. But don’t just read ten books
From September to December, weeks 36 to 53, there are only around 120 days. That doesn’t sound like very long, but in actual fact this handy little Year B of four months is just about enough time to effect some very positive change.
As so often, basic brain chemistry is our change friend here. Behavioural psychologists have long observed what researchers call the “fresh start effect”, where people are more motivated to pursue goals following temporal landmarks that psychologically separate one period of life from another. While New Year’s Day receives most of the attention, the return from summer holidays, the beginning of a new school year and the arrival of autumn can create exactly the same sense of renewal.
For one thing, it is quite long enough to lose a meaningful amount of weight, read ten books, complete a professional qualification, build a substantial investment pot, or simply spend more intentional time with the people who matter most. The problem is not that we overestimate what can be achieved in four months; more often, we underestimate it.
The difference is that September carries an added advantage. Unlike January, there is less pressure to completely (and perhaps rather unrealistically) reinvent ourselves overnight. Instead, the remaining months of the year invite a more focused and accomplishable question: What could I realistically accomplish before December?
The answers are often reassuringly concrete. Take health. Losing 10kg before the end of the year may sound ambitious but spread over four months that’s 0.6kg per week—a pace that many clinicians regard as realistic when supported by sustainable changes to diet and exercise. Even modest weight loss can deliver meaningful health benefits; the NHS says that losing just 5% of body weight can improve blood pressure, blood sugar control and cardiovascular risk factors. Which would be amazing, but you could set the 10kg target as your Year B goal with a good chance of meeting it.
Or brain feeding. Until it is broken down, reading ten books sounds like a major commitment, but a book every twelve days would, for most people, equate to less than an hour of reading each evening for most people. Over four months, this might mean acquiring a working knowledge of investing, Artificial Intelligence, Napoleon, game theory, leadership or Byzantine History—knowledge that compounds in much the same way as financial capital. (Well, it’s still good for you.)
Professional development follows the same principle. Many useful qualifications, executive courses and certifications can be completed in a single season of the year. Four months is, at least on paper, enough time to learn a new language to conversational level.
Setting goals on multiple life fronts changes up the picture
So, we could do a lot in this little Year B of ours. The financial side of September-December is also worth kicking around. Saving £20,000 in four months is clearly not realistic for every household, but for many higher earners it could be a mission. For sure, it would mean a reassessment of discretionary pre-Christmas spending and attention on purposeful saving rather than habitual consumption—but even if that specific figure is unattainable, asking how much additional capital could be accumulated over the next 120 days might really help your long-term plan.
Perhaps more importantly, it reminds us that wealth creation is not solely about investment returns, it is also about behaviour. Small changes sustained consistently often outperform dramatic changes that quickly fade. Redirecting a monthly bonus into investments, reducing unnecessary expenditure, or maximising pension or ISA allowances well before the tax year ends are relatively modest decisions that can have lasting positive consequences for you and your project.
So, instead of seeing September as the beginning of the end of another year and the start of a long run up to Christmas, it could instead become the start of a focused Year B mini sprint. What’s nice about this chunk of time is that our four months is short enough to create urgency, but also long enough to produce meaningful, measurable progress.
By the time January arrives, some will once again be writing lists of resolutions. Maybe you could be doing a bit less of that, as you can see the results of goals they quietly began in September.
Worth a think? I’m always here to help sharpen up your thinking… especially the crazy heat has gone, and we can get to some mists and mellow fruitfulness 🙂
Happy New Year B!
- The value of investments and any income from them can fall as well as rise. You may not get back the full amount invested.
- Investing in shares should be regarded as a long-term investment and should fit in with your overall attitude to risk and financial circumstances.
- The value of pensions and any income from them can fall as well as rise. You may not get back the full amount invested
- The favourable tax treatment of ISAs may be subject to changes in legislation in the future.