Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you use them I may receive commissions, at no extra cost to you. See my full disclosure policy for additional information.
The holidays bring with them a lot of joy and cheer, but they can also leave you with a financial hangover that can take many months to recover from. After all the presents, decorations, and hosting of family events, the credit card bills start rolling in and suddenly the thought of buying something else can be overwhelming. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to start recovering financially after the holidays. Read on to learn how you can avoid the post-holiday financial hangover.
Consider a No-Spend Month
A no-spend month might be just what you need to either give yourself a little pocket cash to use when buying holiday gifts, or will help you to recover from what you end up spending during the holiday season. And help you to avoid hitting a financial hangover post-holiday. Of course, this doesn’t mean not spending money on essentials such as gas or groceries, but just a month of not spending any money on non essentials, like home decor or new gadgets.
If I’m being honesty this is the hardest tactic for me to follow personally. I just love to shop and buy new decorative items for my home or new clothes. I’m a girl, what can I san I say? Determining wants versus needs really helps with sticking to a no-spend month plan. No-spend means anything beyond essentials and necessities such as gas and groceries. If you are doing this immediately following the holidays, consider putting your focus on any thing new you might’ve got from “Santa”.
Instead of buying anything else you might not need right then, take some time to declutter an area of your house to make room for anything new. Doing this might help to curb your desire to go shopping, as you discover things in your house you might have forgotten about. It’s just like shopping, but for free and in your own home!
Create a Post-Holiday Budget to Avoid Financial Hangover
You know that the holidays tend to take a financial toll on our bank accounts, even on those years that you swear it’s going to be a “light Christmas”. Between gift shopping, party hosting, and family get togethers, the debt racks up after than you can even keep track. Help your family avoid a post-holiday financial hangover by setting a Christmas budget for everyone to stick to for gift buying.
Creating a post-holiday budget, for yourself as well as within the family is the best way to prepare for and recover from a costly holiday season. Having a post-holiday budget gives me peace of mind going into the holiday season because I know that once the holidays have passed I already have a plan in place to get my self up side right with my finances right away. Rather than waiting until it’s time to make a New Years Resolution to my self that I will get my finances straight by the end of that year.
You can do this by deciding on a budget for your daily/weekly/monthly expenses that you know will still exist following the holiday season. Such as groceries, gas, and other essentials. Additionally, you can restrict how much money you spend on more frivolous purchases that aren’t “needs” in the months following the holidays. Purchases such as clothes, shoes, home decor, and other various non essentials. Financial hangover doesn’t have to be an inevitable part of the holiday season every year.
Cut Unnecessary Expenses to Protect you from Financial Hangover
You can do this one even during the holiday seasons to prepare for the post holiday regrouping of your personal finances. Consider the different subscriptions you probably have for things that you don’t use every single day. Different streaming services, digital book clubs, gym memberships, or maybe online gaming platforms that you pay for on a monthly basis. By getting yourself in good financial shape before the holidays strike can help prevent a financial hangover, come January 1st.
I was recently able to cut my monthly bills by nearly $70 just by revisiting a few recurring bills that I was able to chop down a bit, and unsubscribing to a few subscriptions that I wasn’t using as much as I thought I would. Bills like cell service, cable, and home internet are ones that you can often negotiate to a lower price if you’ve been with the same service for some time now and are either outside of a promotional window, or are seeing cheaper options else where.
Start Setting Savings Goals
This is actually something I practice always, not just after the holidays. But I certainly do buckle down on it even more following all of the financial stress of the holidays. I actually use PayPal to make and manage my financial goals. Check out my article all about how I do that, here.
One post-holiday savings goal you should consider having is starting a savings fund for the next holiday season. Even if it’s $25 per pay check. That would give you roughly $650 by the end of the year if you began in January. That’s a pretty decent Christmas shopping fund if you ask me. But I don’t have any children yet, so I don’t yet know what kind of Christmas budget I should expect to have when there are little ones to buy for. I’m sure it’ll be more like $30 to $40 per pay check.
Setting savings goals for the more expensive things you know will be coming up through the year will help you stay one step ahead on your personal finances. There are annual expenses we all know we have to face. Like car insurance and needed car maintainance like new tires and oil changes. There are also the expenses we look forward to like family vacations. Start you savings goals just after the holidays to get a head start on staying ontop of managing your personal finances.
Recovering from, or avoiding all together, the post-holiday financial hangover doesn’t have to be an impossible task. By taking a few proactive steps, it’s possible to start making progress towards the goal of financial stability. Consider taking a no-spend month, creating a post-holiday budget, prioritizing debt repayment, cutting unnecessary expenses, and start setting savings goals.
Wonderful tips! These are all practical ways we can be mindful of our spending and save some money. It can be hard to have a no-spend week/month, but just keeping it in mind helps me rethink impulse purchases. Thanks for sharing!
I agree, a no spend month or week is incredibly hard! Even a no-spend day sometimes 🤦🏻♀️ Once the holidays are over I try and challenge myself to limit spending on non essentials, like you said, the impulse purchases.
I appreciate the feed back! Happy holidays!