Christmas is finally here and if you are making last minute plans to make it memorable for you and your loved ones, ensure you don’t break the bank while you are at it. This season can be quite stressful as you know you don’t have it, but you want to go all out and have fun. Here are a few sure-fire ways that you can go broke this holiday season:
Trying to Keep Up With The Holiday Trends
If you haven’t planned for it and you know you don’t have it, don’t try to keep up with appearances. You don’t need to stress out in the next year paying debts for the previous year. Doing so will get you into a vicious cycle of borrowing at the end of every year to keep up with appearances. This way, you may never have a chance to set aside some holiday funds. A new year ought to be a new chance to do things better, not an endless rat race.
Buying Gifts For EVERYONE
Many of us cannot afford to buy gifts or give gift cards to everyone – particularly if we include our uncles, aunties, and cousins. But we find ourselves doing it anyway because we want to keep the family spirit alive. I would suggest to spice things up a little but keep it fun and reduce costs significantly by playing Secret Santa. Secret Santa is basically the act of randomly assigning a person to whom they will give a gift. The identity of the gift giver is secret hence the name ‘Secret Santa’.
Treating Yourself JUST BECAUSE
It isn’t uncommon for us to want to treat ourselves to nice things once in a while. After all, you have worked hard all year round and deserve something nice too. Just don’t break the bank while you are at it. During holiday seasons many of us go out of the budget because we couldn’t help but treat ourselves to not one, but several nice things. While gift shopping for others, ensure that your name is also on the list with a set budget just like everyone else to avoid going off budget.
Go Crazy on Holiday Deals
Do not let stores determine what and how you buy with their numerous deals. Shopping malls have a tendency of mock you if venture into them without a determined gaze. A wandering eye can be dangerous. Just like the end of year holiday season, deals too happen annually and can be planned for. If you want a new set of cutlery or a home makeover, the holidays are a great time to do it. Almost every store has a sale and things can get ridiculously cheap at this time of the year. It would be prudent to save up and take advantage of these annual offers. Go to the mall with some kind of plan to attack your holiday shopping list. If you go in without a goal, all the red sale stickers will draw you in like a moth to a flame. Therefore, make a plan and stick to it. It may require the willpower of a vegetarian in a steakhouse, but I know you can do it.
Traveling Long Distances
Please don’t get me wrong here, it isn’t a bad idea to travel just don’t break the bank while you are at. Plan beforehand. Buying plane tickets for a family of maybe five to visit family grandparents shouldn’t be a decision to be taken lightly. If you must, plan ahead and but the tickets as far out as possible to save big on fares. This way, you will not have to prioritize going to see your grandparents over providing for your family.
Final Thought
Don’t fall for the holiday hype that you must go shopping and come home with more than dozen shopping bags of goodies and get into debt while you are at it. That’s simply not smart. It’s simply an all-around bad idea.
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