Your post-Christmas financial detox
Christmas is over.
The clock has reset, and the countdown begins for the next one.
Many will have eaten too much, and spent too much.
As they do every year, credit card balances blow out by more than $100 million.
It's time for both a financial and a physical detox.
Both start in the same place: weighing up how big a state you are in.
With your weight you step onto the scales. With your finances you assess the scale of your credit card debt, and what's in your savings account.
The next steps are clear: The overweight need to eat less, eat better and exercise more. The financially damaged need to spend less, clear debt and start saving.
A post-Christmas financial detox requires you to set yourself goals.
Men in particular are very goal-oriented. Written goals are more likely to be achieved. Voicing them to friends and family can add the motivation of avoiding shame and winning praise. Build in milestones to judge your progress by.
As with losing weight, clearing debt requires restraint.
Spending has to drop. Identify spending leaks, and plug them, or trim spending by giving something up. Giving up the worst things in your life for a month (bought coffees, snacking, booze, etc) can free money for debt repayment without resulting in a life of permanent denial.
The best detoxes end with a strategy in place not to repeat the cycle.
Detoxing only to repeat the excess is a positively Roman way of doing things, and the Roman way is not really what Jesus was all about, and so neither should our celebration of his birth.
It is hard to get Christmas right, but every family has to develop its own way of doing it, creating traditions while staying within the family's budget.
Make your own mincemeat. Dress the tree on Christmas Eve. Have a picnic breakfast at the beach. Make your annual donation to the City Mission. Go to church, even if it's only to hear the carols.
And yes, buy presents, but not too many.
Those awful feelings of "present fatigue" and "present disgust" are signs your family is overdoing Christmas and may be saddling the children with lifelong financially-damaging Christmas expectations. One decent gift from mum and dad, and a gift from each sibling is enough. Your children's friends don't need presents from your children.
Once you have your Christmas plan, look at your options for pre-funding it.
Consider supermarket Christmas clubs, laybuys, setting up a cheaper Christmas account at the bank, taking out a Hampsta card, or even signing up to Chrisco.
Yes, I know Chrisco is expensive, but I also understand the reasons why some Christmas-planners choose to wear the extra cost to be certain Christmas won't be a flop.
Written by Rob Stock. First appeared on Stuff.co.nz.
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