(Bloomberg) -- New Year’s resolutions have a notoriouslylow success rate—only 8 percent of people achieve their goals.Losing weight, drinking less, being nicer to the cat—all theseaspirations fall away as the cold January days wear on.

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The rate spikes, however, when the resolution has to do withmoney and finance.

This trend showed up in research by the goal-setting websiteStickK. Users create a commitment contract for a personal goal andcan have a “referee” (usually a friend) verify their progress.

They can also add a financial stake, such as pledging an amountto be automatically sent from their credit card on file with thesite to a cause they detest if they fail to meet their goal.

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When a referee is used, the average success rate is 61 percentfor goals related to money and finance, says Jordan Goldberg, thecompany’s chairman. (For those wanting to lose weight, the successrate is a not-too-shabby 47 percent.)

When the goal involves using both a referee and a financialstake, the success rate for financial resolutions is 87 percent(and a healthy 73 percent for pound-droppers).

The power of loss aversion (who wants to “lose” money to a causehe despises?) and sense of accountability to oneself and a friendare built into the model.

But when it comes to financial goals, the higher rate of successmay be tied to a symbiotic relationship between human psychologyand financial technology.

Specifically, willpower—or the lack thereof—is taken out of theequation, said Meir Statman, a finance professor at Santa ClaraUniversity. “When it comes to diet or exercise, you have to musterself-control every time you are hungry, face a steak or dessert,and every time you have to get out of a warm bed to go to the gym,”Statman said. “With financial resolutions, you can set up a 401(k)or IRA and have payments go into it automatically.”

Many people underestimate how big a role inertia plays inblocking decision-making, says Dan Egan, director of behavioralfinance and investing at New York-based online investment adviserBetterment, which automates many financial tasks for clients.“Automation is a way of making a decision once and having itpermanently overcome that inertia,” he said. Across the country,many workplace savings plans are automatically enrolling workers,with some also bumping up workers’ contribution every year—withoutthe employee doing a thing.

There are more ways to automate savings outside of workplaceplans. Digit uses an algorithm to track a user’s cash flow patternsto time the movement of small, almost unnoticeable amounts of moneyinto savings. Betterment has a tool to manage cash flowautomatically. Qapital allows users to create customized “if this,then that” rules that link with apps and move a set amount of moneyinto savings based on certain conditions. Users can automaticallysave whenever they go to the gym, for example, or even wheneverPresident Trump sends a Twitter message.

Digit Chief Executive Officer Ethan Bloch’s advice on settingfinancial goals is first to reflect on the prior year, analyzingwhat went right, and wrong, with your money.

“Do something—take a walk, or sit down and write it out—whereyou put your perception of reality in front of you,” he said. “Weare so constantly switching attention and distracting ourselves,especially from painful things, and we don’t even know we’re doingit.”

Once you’ve chewed on 2017 and gotten your fiscal prioritiesstraight, Bloch advises, set only one goal. “I’ve been spendingtime with executives at some of the highest-performing technologyfirms on the planet, and this is the recurring theme,” he said.

If you set five goals, you’re giving yourself five ways to fail.But choose the right goal, and it might just give you some leverageeventually to catch the other four.

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