by Wendell Cayton

As the New Year rolls around, we once again face the celebrations, both festive and serious, that mark the end of an old year and the beginning of a new one. For investors, the old one wasn’t so bad, but as a culture driven by change and opportunity, we still look forward to a better New Year.

New Year’s Resolutions symbolize our desire to make a fresh start. This custom goes back many centuries, and it has become a ritualized way of reviewing the past year and looking toward the future. It’s appealing because it gives us the opportunity to imagine changes we’d like to make.

Our calendar starts the New Year in the month Julius Caesar named after Janus, the god of gates, doors and beginnings. Janus had two faces—one looking forward, the other backward.

The Indians of the North American forests and plains celebrated the New Year by burning their old food stores from the year before and allowing the fires to go out, after which they were rekindled to symbolize a new beginning.

Cleaning has been a recurring symbolic idea. In ancient England, chimneys were swept so that good luck could more easily descend and stay. Germans still hold that one should live the first day of the year the way every remaining day should be lived; among other things, the hausfrau spends extra time making her home spotless. Housecleaning is also traditional in Japan, China and Africa.

Eating pork on the first day of the year became a tradition in nearly every country because pigs root in a forward direction, symbolic of a fat, plentiful future. The custom of making noise with horns, bells and other devices goes back to the ancient practice of using noise to drive evil spirits away.

Looking forward, perhaps I can share a few resolution thoughts with you.

Instead of rushing out to buy a membership to the local gym, go to www.RealAge.com. Take their age test, giving answers that reflect how you live now. The results will compare your biological age to your chronological age.

At the end, there is an Age Reduction Planner you can use to see yourself as you would like to become . . . ten pounds lighter, adding more exercise, etc. The object of this “game” is to reduce your biological age by improving your lifestyle. The new results should decrease your biological age—and if they do, then those changes you hypothetically made become your guideline for developing a new lifestyle resolution.

On the financial side, an easy resolution to make that is fun to keep is to develop the habit of saving a little money each week for a slush fund, whose purpose may be nothing more than paying for a special night out at the end of the year. This can be done with as little effort as keeping a jar in your bedroom and depositing all your pocket change into it each night. You’ll be amazed at how fast the jar fills, and you may also find that it stimulates you to get really serious about saving and increasing the amount you put away in your retirement account.

Finally, be kind to the bears. They’ve had three years in the sun, forcing bulls to run off and cower in their sheds. They have only been able to make this claim twice in the past twenty years—and now they have retreated to their lairs. As in nature, everything moves in cycles, and the bears will return. This is not a time to gloat; rather, it is a time to be thankful they didn’t eat us all.

May you enjoy a Happy New Year and good investing!