A practical guide to taking control of your money this year

Personal finance is one of those subjects where the noise is loudest at exactly the moments you can least afford to listen to it. The aim of this guide is the opposite: a small number of decisions that hold up across most situations, and a way of thinking about money that doesn't depend on the markets behaving themselves.

Start with what you actually spend, not what you think you spend. Three months of bank statements, read carefully, will tell you more about your financial life than any budgeting app. The point is not to feel bad about a habit. The point is to know the number.

Once you know the number, separate the spending you choose from the spending you can't avoid. Rent, energy, transport, food, debt repayments, childcare — these are the load-bearing walls. Everything else is a choice you make month by month. Most people find their flexible spending is smaller than they feared and larger than they hoped.

Build a buffer before you build anything else. The unglamorous goal of having a few weeks of essential costs in an instant-access account does more for your stress levels than any clever investment. It is the difference between a setback and a crisis.

Only when the buffer is in place does it make sense to think about longer-term saving and investing. Workplace pensions are usually the most efficient starting point because of employer contributions and tax treatment. Beyond that, the boring answer — low-cost diversified funds, held for a long time — is boring for a reason.

None of this guarantees an outcome. What it does is make sure you are making decisions, rather than reacting to them. That is the part of personal finance that no app can do for you.