MoneyHabitsControl your money, change your life |
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UnderstandingFinance PersonalFinance
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Coping with the cost of ChristmasFor many people at Christmas what should be a time of celebration to share with friends and family becomes a nightmare of stress and worry over how to cope with the cost.Many people and families struggle from month to month to make ends meet at the best of times, and the sad reality is that the extra burden of Christmas tips many over the financial edge. Where cash and savings aren’t sufficient to cover the expenses, many turn to credit cards and other forms of loans in order to make ends meet. With some credit-card rates running up around 20% per annum, it’s no surprise that many card holders are still paying off the previous Christmas by the time the next one comes around. Every year it seems that the marketing push to get us ready for Christmas starts earlier and earlier. For months leading up to Christmas we are constantly bombarded by messages that are designed to make us feel good about buying products of all descriptions. Product launches are delayed to coincide with the Christmas rush and corporations spend insanely vast sums of money on advertising in order to part you from your hard-earned money. The pressure on us as consumers during the lead up to Christmas can be quite overwhelming. But Christmas doesn’t have to be the financial pressure-cooker that it is for many people. All it takes is a little bit of planning, self control and discipline and your next Christmas could, financially at least, be one of your best. The key, as with many things, is in the preparation. Just like you should be financially planning ahead for when you retire, so too should you plan ahead for each and every Christmas. Christmas isn’t going away – it’s going to come again this year, next year, the year after that and so on. So now is the time to develop a ‘Christmas technique’ that will help relieve the burden each time Christmas rolls around – and the cornerstone of that technique means starting your Christmas planning and shopping in January of each year. Putting financial matters off until the very last moment (like Christmas shopping the week before Christmas), is what gets many people into financial difficulty in the first place - be it Christmas or any other time. So start early, plan well, and reap the rewards later. Much of the blame for why many people get into debt over Christmas time can be laid squarely at the feet of marketers. They know our weak spots and they know how exploit them. We have been conditioned by marketers to spend vast amounts of money at Christmas in order to enjoy the season and by falling to this marketing ploy we’re setting expectations that many of us find difficult to cope with. For nearly two whole months leading up to Christmas the message from every quarter is a constant ‘spend, spend, spend’. And if that’s not bad enough, we’re then hit with the ‘January Sales’. ...continued |
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