With Christmas rapidly approaching, the pressures on our spending can increase dramatically. There are Christmas parties to attend, presents to buy and hopefully a holiday as well. It’s a great time of year, but can also be a very costly.
So how do you avoid the Xmas blow out and the prospect of starting the 2016 with a “hangover” of debt that you have accumulated during the Christmas/New year period?
The most rational way to avoid the Xmas blow out is not to incur it in the first place. But at this time of the year we don’t always operate in a rational way.
The second best way to avoid the Xmas blow out is to have been saving money each week over the past year so that you have a store of money to access to cover the silly season costs. If’s that’s you, your stress levels about spending will be much lower as you know you already have the money in the bank ready for parties, presents and holidays. But, if you haven’t done this already, it’s a little late to start.
Dropping down the avoid the Xmas blow out list at number three is the thought of budgeting your spending over the next few weeks. Aim to spend what you can afford and limit or avoid over the top spending that’s going to intensify your ‘debt hangover”.
Lastly at number four is the “debt hangover’ itself. You haven’t saved any money during the year to cover Christmas expense, you haven’t been able to avoid spending, and yes, it all got a bit our of control. You wake up in 2016 and realise that the silly season took it’s toll and you now have a nasty credit card bill to deal with. What do you do?
If you’re a home owner with some equity in your property you have the option of debt consolidation to at least lower the costs of repaying the credit card. If you’re not a property owner and you’ve got no secret savings, then you simply have to bit the bullet and pay the thing back. The quicker the better to reduce the interest you pay. Perhaps at the same time starting your Christmas fund so you can avoid the Xmas blow out in 2016….Just a thought.
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