Tip of the Day: Cut back and replenish your savings quickly instead of doing it slowly throughout multiple months.
This holiday season has been great to me! I love Christmas time because it reminds me of sleeping at my grandmothers house with my cousins on Christmas Eve watching Mickeys Holiday, Home Alone and all else that would keep our attention as we waited for morning! I don’t love the cold but I enjoy the white snow and holiday decor that saturates the streets and homes of cheerful celebrators! As I have been going crazy to prepare for the holidays I also have to find a way to sweep up the residue left behind from overspending, overeating, over driving and much more!
Many of us decided to go all out and spend all of our funds plus our bonus funds on gifts for friends family and coworkers! Well, now I’m going to help you clean up your budget and your closet!
First things first! Let’s take a look at our bank statement, wallet, savings jar and everything else we decided to pull funds from for extra spending! We want to know exactly what type of loss we may be working with for next month. The point is to find the hole and fill it this month as if the holidays never happened! It’s better to cut back drastically in January to replenish funds than to pay for it in stress later. Anything can happen from pipes bursting to last minute travel expenses, and when it does, you don't want to be the irresponsible spender that spent all their emergency fund on frivolous gifts.
Next! Go ahead and do some “spring cleaning” as they say! Only this time we’re searching for clothes with tags on them specifically! After the holidays were left with many miscellaneous gifts we didn’t give out or we received that will just end up as clutter! I personally have received the same book twice and a toaster oven a few times! (We will go ahead and add all the clothes we bought last season that we really didn't need and failed to return them. lol) If you enjoy shopping or receiving gifts you definitely have some tagged clothing that you just never got around to wearing! It’s best to get rid of tagged items as close to the day you received them as possible. It’s easy for our junk to be junk to others if it’s a super old style or model. Time to put them to good use! Grab a few holiday bags and fill them up! You can find a great nonprofit to donate your items, give them to family who may have wanted them and you can sell them for a few bucks at your local consignment shop (clothes), another online platform for resell or have your very own garage sale!
Lastly! We have to buckle down on going out and hanging out in places that we tend to spend money at! For me that means no malls, outlets or Target! (If you don’t love Target, your completely missing out on life!) If your friends want to hang, suggest that you all go to one friend’s house instead of a restaurant or bar. You guys can even all bring a tasty dish or snack, so the host doesn’t have to spend much either! Now, if you all decide to stay and help clean up afterwards, that’s on you! But overall this will help you keep the money you have in order to replenish your savings or pay bills!
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