Christmas is a distant memory, and even New Year's Day is behind us.

But for those of you who have yet to make resolutions for 2004, don't worry. There's still time.

In fact, I can probably tell you what your resolutions will be. First, you will vow to lose weight. And second, you will promise to pay off your debt.

At least, those are the predictions of the folks at myGoals.com, a goal-setting Web site. I checked out their New Year's resolution trends last year in this column, and I thought I'd take a look again this year to see if anything had changed.

Turns out it has, although the economy is once again a major player in what people are resolving to do.

According to myGoals.com projections, which are based on an unscientific look at 500 anonymous goals set by the site's users during the third quarter of 2003, the number of people with career-related goals has dropped dramatically this year.

"Things might actually be returning to normal," said Greg Helmstetter, CEO of myGoals.com in a prepared statement.

That's 2002 normal. Last year, myGoals.com projected that 27 percent of New Year's resolutions would be career-related, an 18 percent jump from 2002. But this year, career goals are back down 9 percentage points to 18 percent. That means the health and fitness category, with its weight-loss component, will take the top spot in 2004 as it accounts for 22 percent of resolutions.

"This year, a marked drop in job-related goals shows that people are starting to focus more on other areas of their lives, such as family, getting organized and fixing up the house," Helmstetter said. "That's good news for everybody."

When it comes to personal finance resolutions, myGoals.com expects debt retirement to be the most popular, at 48 percent. In fact, ditching debt was the second-most-popular resolution overall.

Count me in on that one. My credit card balances are feeling the effects of a little bit too merry a Christmas. My daughters probably would disagree, but I think Santa's largesse indicates he was feeling a little too confident in the economic recovery.

However, paying off debt is not the only financial resolution myGoals is expecting people to make. Despite the words of advice I've passed along in this column during the past few months, 33 percent of real estate-related resolutions this year will focus on buying rental property. That's up from 10 percent last year.

"Last year, we observed a sharp decrease in goals related to investing in stocks," Helmstetter said. "It's safe to say that real estate is absorbing some of that investment capital. While real estate still remains a relatively small category of goals overall, resolutions to purchase rental properties — ranging from single-family homes to large apartment buildings — are significantly stronger than we've ever seen in the three years we've been collecting data."