Holidays are a wonderful, magical time of the year that eventually ends and somehow takes most of your money with it. If you are looking into how you can prevent this, we’ve got you covered! Here’s a guide on the simple ways to avoid overspending this holiday season.
Set A Realistic Budget
and Stick To It No Matter The Temptation
If you want to avoid overspending this holiday season, you first need to set a hard limit on how much you can spend. Note, too, that just setting a budget and not sticking to it is pointless. So is setting a budget that leaves you so little money you can barely survive until your next paycheck. Holidays are lovely, but they are supposed to be a happy time, not a survival simulator. Of course, if you are unhappy with your budget, there are ways to improve it. One way would be to plan well ahead and create a holiday fund. Barring this, you can consider getting a simple side job so that you can temporarily bump up your earnings. It’s not perfect, but it will give you some leeway when planning your budget.
Do Some Price Research
Holidays, while usually a great time, are also a minefield of ‘discounts’ and ‘sales’. And we use minefield precisely because not all of those sales and discounts are what they seem. As the experts from divinemoving.com like to point out, you can indeed find all sorts of discounted items and services during this period. However, just as typical are scams that slap the discount label on things to make them seem more appealing. If you see something being sold at an outrageous price while being listed as discounted (while, of course, having an even higher ‘original’ price listed, too), you should look it up and see if the ‘deal’ is valid. As unethical as it is, businesses often cite an unrealistic price as the ‘original’ and then slap the item’s actual price on as the ‘discount’. This makes it easy to overspend.
Shop Online
Contrary to what you might expect, one of the best ways to avoid overspending this holiday season is to shop online. This is because online stores tend to post many actual discounts and promotions. Even if you are not taking everything at face value, it is much easier to check the actual price of listed items from the comfort of your home. When shopping in a store, it is easy to get caught up in the moment and pay more than you should for an item. Now, shopping exclusively online might seem like a bad idea because you might need to deal with delivery costs. But driving from store to store isn’t cheap either and it requires a lot of time and effort to get the best prices.
Don’t Make Frivolous Purchases
It can be challenging to resist the urge to make silly purchases when preparing for the holidays. After all, it’s the holidays, right? Why does it have to be so important to budget carefully during this time? This sort of thinking leads you down the path of regret a few weeks later when you’re staring at your bills and wondering how to scrape together enough money. Besides, even if you don’t go over budget, is it worth purchasing things you might use once and then never think about again? Â
Make Some Gifts Practical
Typically, most of your frivolous purchases are actually focused on gifts you get for people. And while this is admittedly not as big a ‘waste’ as buying frivolous stuff for yourself, it’s still not great. Instead, aim to get gifts that are at least a bit practical. Do you want to buy a fantastic item for your brother or one of the kids in your family who loves astronomy? Sure, but go for a gift like a floating, glowing moon or other celestial body that doubles as a lamp they’d actually use daily. You want to buy a goofy piece of clothing as a joke gift? At least make it something like pajamas or funny slippers they can actually wear at home.
 Cook Your Own Food Rather Than Order Or Eat Out
One of the most significant expense sources during the holiday season is food. Not only because it’s the holidays, and you’ll likely be hosting friends and family at least once. It’s also because we spend much more time at home. This means people are idle more often, and even slight boredom can make you peckish. The problem that pops up here is that we simply do not feel motivated to cook during holidays. So, lots of people order food and or eat outside. This really inflates the food expenses when buying the materials and cooking the meals is much cheaper.
 Track Your Spending
The final way to avoid overspending this holiday season and properly manage your family finances is to track your spending. And we do mean all of it. It’s easy for ‘small’ expenses to slip past your budgeting and ruin your carefully-done calculations. Want to grab those cheap candy bars for your kids on the way out of the store? Go for it! But also write that down and note how often you do it. Once or twice isn’t a big deal, but doing it often makes the expenses add up.
 In Conclusion:
If you keep our tips on the simple ways to avoid overspending this holiday season in mind, you’ll make it through the holidays just fine. Of course, the earlier you start preparing for them, the better.