January has passed as it always does – resolutions, goal setting, vision boarding, new me-ing. Less booze, more kefir; less chicken, more tofu. Personally, I sit in the camp that loves the fresh starts that the first few weeks of January bring, even if I know that it’ll all fall away as fast as it began.

This year, however, the resolution posts have been met with an undercurrent of change. Out with the motivational quotes taken from a canvas at Homesense, in with the realistic approach to how we really want to self-improve. TikTokers are calling it ‘de-influencing’; I prefer the term ‘humanising’. I’m sure you’ve seen the social posts I’m referring to – calling out the pressure to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ or the Kardashians, depending on your generation.

At the City Girl Network, we’ve seized this new appetite for realism and built a campaign that flips self-improvement on its head. When you strip back the marketing, two core themes shine through the self-improvement space: wellness and money. It makes complete sense. They’re the two core building blocks for leading a fulfilling life that people so often fall down on. They’re also the two that are solely impacted by the decisions you make.

Generations of barriers still stand strong when it comes to how women approach wellness and money. There’s the concoction of discrimination in the UK’s Gender Health Gap; medical gaslighting, 2.5% funding into reproductive health, exclusions from drug trials and the terrifying reality that women are 32% more likely to die from a male surgeon than a female one.

Then there’s the Gender Pay Gap (7% last year), and the huge psychological repercussions of being constantly reminded that anyone who isn’t a white cis-male will always struggle with money – and anyone who’s disabled, part of the Global Majority, LGBTQIA+ and working class will struggle even more.

In my view, there is only one radical act that women can take to start tearing down these barriers: taking control.

Much like you would for your house, bills, kids, pets and savings, we’re encouraging people to carve out a Wellness Budget into their personal finance plans for 2025 (and beyond). This includes fitness, self-care, mental health, nutrition and hobbies – products and services you used to take from your disposable income.

Reformer pilates, hypnotherapy and Quinton minerals don’t stand a chance when they’re up against a bottomless brunch, a gift for a friend or an instant gratification fix. When you carve out a financial space for well-being enhancement, you’re reducing the emotional impact of a choice that has two different ROIs.

Let’s look at this from a business perspective: businesses of all shapes and sizes are separating employee wellness budgets from rewards and office parties. This is because they both have different ROIs.

In the simplest terms, rewards and incentives (i.e. office parties) offer a consistent short-term motivator for employees to hit targets and improve collaboration. An employee wellness budget targets issues such as employee retention, sick days and productivity. When executed well, they’re targeting two core issues simultaneously and resulting in a happier workforce – and a calmer HR manager.

But there’s a big wellness-shaped elephant in the room that we need to address: the fundamental lack of education when it comes to the different ways that we could invest in our health. Yoga, whilst a popular starting point, has a terrible reputation for gatekeeping information on the practice. You only need to Google “How many types of yoga are there?” to see that for yourself.

Then there are acronyms like EMDR, NLP and CBT that have reached mainstream public consciousness through snippets of information online. There’s a constant risk of misinformation, misunderstanding and misuse of funds. And women are two and a half times less likely to ask questions due to a lack of self-confidence. We’re building a knowledge resource centre on our website to start to tackle this issue.

No one size fits all, no Wellness Budget will be the same, but the creation of one will spark a resolution we can all have in common: the radical act of prioritising ourselves.