Whether you set a budget for the holidays or not, I’ll bet like most people you do a lot of extra spending that you don’t normally do during the rest of the year. January often finds us with new debt, or working to get our finances caught up, back to where they need to be. Today I’m sharing a few tips to help you bounce back after holiday spending. Plus, sign up below to download the Savings Tracker printables, so you can set and reach your savings goals and be ready for the next holiday season.
Expenses
The first step is to curb your extra spending and expenses. January is the perfect time to have a “no spend” month. If you are really buckling down, a good idea would be to track your expenses everyday. You can use a regular notebook or some fun expenses tracking printables for your planner. That way, you know exactly where your money is going and what expenses you can reduce or eliminate. When it comes to your monthly bills, take a look and see if there is any way to lower those or eliminate any that are unnecessary. It never hurts to call service providers, such as cable and internet, to see if there’s any way you could be saving some money. Once you have your spending under control, you can start looking into the damage from holiday spending.
That damage for you may mean just getting spending under control and getting back on track with your monthly bills, or maybe you have new debt to get rid of. You’ll want to do that as quickly as you can, so that you don’t end up paying more than you need to in interest and fees.
Get Rid of Debt
I love Dave Ramsey’s method of getting rid of debt. It gets pretty in depth, but to put it simply, here’s how it works.
- List your debts in order, smallest to largest.
- Pay minimums on all your debts.
- Pile all extra money onto the smallest debt until it is paid.
- Snowball that payment amount plus the minimum on the next largest debt.
- Pay that debt off.
- Repeat.
You definitely don’t want to be coming up on next Christmas still paying off old debts, especially those from the previous Christmas. So, get focused and make a plan for paying off those debts.
Save for Next Year
Finally, the holidays come every year, so to avoid the overwhelm and over spending, make a plan to be ready. Set a goal for the amount you’d like to have saved for holiday spending. Then, keep track of your progress. Break your big savings goal down by month or by week to make it easy to know exactly how much to save.
You can download these Savings Tracker printables when you sign up below!
Plus, you can grab my full Budgeting printable sets over in my shop on Etsy.
