The holidays can be not only the most stressful time of the year when it comes to planning family get togethers, depending on the dynamic of the family, could be splitting time with many parties, on top of that, your wallet can take a huge hit during this spending peak of the year. During the months of November and December is where you can really feel the most burden, so anywhere you can save money to make the holidays a little less stressful, all the better for everyone.
Spread Out the Purchases
By making all of the purchases at once you could be in for a shock when the statement comes in the mail. In order to avoid paying interest you would need to pay the full balance by the due date. Starting to pay interest could lead to years of financial disaster if that balance keeps creeping up, so speaking from experience, you should always ensure that you can pay off the full statement balance by the due date so there isn’t anything to worry about. If you are able to spread out purchases over many paychecks, you will feel less of a burden.
Take Advantage of Sales
The end of the year is when you’ll typically find the best sales of the year, whether that is on sale for the holidays, not to mention Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and all of the other year-end clearances that are out there. No matter if you are in the market for a new car lease, clothes, or Christmas shopping, the end of the year can be the best time to find anything that you need. While you should never pay full retail price for anything you purchase, there will be plenty of sales to take advantage of.
Try Using Cash
A great way to keep spending until control is to use cash instead of a credit card. When you use cash, you actually see the money leaving your hand and going into the register, so it might make you think twice before making a purchase. Once the money is out that you budget, it’s out until next paycheck. With a credit card there really is no holding back, I guess until you hit the credit limit, but that could be thousands. Either way you can keep spending and when you get the credit card bill is when the real shock comes in.
Track Spending
If you asked yourself how much you have spent in the last week, last month, would you know? A great way to root out the unnecessary charges is to take the debit or credit card statement from the previous month and go line by line. A little exercise you can try would be to circle all of the expenses that you could mark as “unnecessary”. Add up all of those charges and see what that total is, the amount that you could still have in your account if you didn’t otherwise spend the money on something you didn’t need in the first place.