The UK’s top 2025 New Year’s resolutions, revealed
With 2024 drawing to an end many of us are starting to think about the future and the New Year's resolutions we're going to make going into 2025.
While more than a quarter of Britons (27%) say they plan to make New Year’s resolutions, turns out its the younger Brits who are in the market for change in 2025 with 52% of 18-24 year olds saying they will make them, compared to only 16% of the over-55s.
Focus on finances and self-improvement in 2025
The YouGov data, which used AI tools to get a more detailed view of the nation's annual pledge-making process, found that money-making and saving is, perhaps unsurprising, at the top of the New Year vows, with just over a fifth (21%) of resolution-makers saying they intend to try and improve their finances in 2025.
Health-related resolutions are also set to be popular as Brits look to improve their future wellbeing. One in six (17%) are vowing to get fit or exercise more, while a similar number say they want to lose weight (16%).
Other self-improvement resolutions include the vow to simply "be healthier", which 7% are planning to make, eat more healthily (5%), and improving mental health (1%). A further 2% also intend to lower the amount of alcohol they drink, while the same number want to quit smoking or vaping.
A better you?
In terms of the other most common promises Brits are making to themselves in 2025, it seems up-skilling is set to be a big trend with 7% claiming they want to arm themselves with some shiny new skills and up their knowledge in the new year. That also seems to involve some self-improvement in other areas too with 5% hoping the new year will see them becoming a better person, perhaps via improving their attitude or working on an area of their personality.
More basically, and somewhat sweetly, a further 5% have resolved to embrace the important things in life and spend more time with their friends and family.
It seems there's something of an age gap when it comes to resolution-making with the youngest adults polled - Gen Z- most likely to make finance-related resolutions (40%), while Gen Xers (who are in their mid-forties to late fifties) are the most likely to be making health-related promises (52%).
What New Year's Resolutions are Britons making for 2025?
How long Brits stick to New Year's resolutions
Despite our promises for a healthier, more financially-savvy 2025, we may have to work a little bit harder to stick to our New Year's vows, if last year's efforts are anything to go by. Of the one in six who made resolutions last year, just one in three (33%) claim to have stuck to all of them, while 45% say they kept to some, but not all their personal pledges and a almost a fifth (19%) confess to failing to keep any of their New Year's resolutions.
Previous research has found that despite promising hit up the gym every day, take up running and quit the booze for good, many Brits didn't actually last longer than a few weeks on their new healthier regime, with data finding that 19th February was the date most Brits will give up their New Year's resolutions.
A further study, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, found that around two-thirds of us abandon New Years resolutions within a month. It revealed that most people make resolutions based on better diet and more exercise, and further, that most make the same resolutions every year - strongly suggesting that they don't stick to them.
The study found that almost two-thirds of the participants abandoned their New Years resolutions within the first month. Likewise, more than half of the subjects had made the same resolutions, or similar ones, the year before.
But 2025 is going to be different isn't it?
Read more about improving health and wellbeing:
How to start working out: A beginner's guide to getting fit for the first time (Yahoo Life UK, 10-min read)
Nine simple ways to lose weight (without really trying) (Yahoo Life UK, 7-min read)
How to save money: 22 easy cost-cutting tips (Yahoo Life UK, 9-min read)
