Interested In The Money Max Account?
Schedule Your Free 1 On 1 Debt Analysis Today
Thank You!
Your information has been submitted.
One of our knowledgeable agents will contact you as soon as possible.
They say it’s better to give than to receive, which is why it’s so easy to overspend during the holidays. But nobody wants to start the new year with excessive debt.
Between travel expenses, gifts, eating out, and holiday celebrations, there’s a lot of holiday spending to keep track of. Without a thorough budget to manage your spending, the festive season can leave you struggling to keep your head above water.
That’s why, in today’s blog, we’ll be covering our top five tips for budgeting for holiday gifts and travel.
To keep your holiday spending under control, the first thing you’ll want to do is to set a reasonable limit. This should account for everything you expect to pay for over the course of the holiday season: gifts, celebrations, food, flights, accommodations, etc.
Many financial organizations recommend capping your holiday expenses at 1 or 1.5% of your annual salary, but this estimate may not work for everyone. With families of all different sizes and varying financial situations, the amount of wiggle room you have could be much less or much greater than those rigid percentages.
If you don’t know where to start, do some digging to find out how much you spent last year and use that as your jumping-off point. If you overspent and need to be more frugal this year, set a lower limit. If your current situation allows for a more liberal approach, go for it!
Just make sure to keep your ultimate financial goals in sight when setting your cap. Your holiday spending should always come out of your disposable income, and it shouldn’t come anywhere near the point of jeopardizing your ability to pay off existing debt or handle living expenses.
The next step to managing your holiday spending is to take a page out of Santa’s playbook.
Sit down and create a list of everyone you plan on getting gifts for, as well as ballpark estimates of how much you’re willing and able to spend on each person. Then, itemize all your expected travel and other holiday expenses.
A well-organized expense list will provide a quick and easy way to manage your holiday budget and serve as a guardrail to help you avoid spur-of-the-moment purchases.
A spreadsheet is a great tool for this type of job because you can split your expenses into categories, create equations to track your totals, and easily change or update things as you go.
Better yet, with a program like the Money Max Account, you can create a custom, itemized budget to track every facet of your holiday spending. A budget you can access 24/7 from your personalized dashboard that brings all your financial information together in one secure location.
The Money Max Account’s bread and butter is interest reduction. It has a track record of over $2.6 billion in paid off debts and counting, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It also empowers users with top-notch money management tools like custom budgeting, cash flow reports, financial projections, and much more.
Why pay more interest than you have to? Learn more about eliminating debt through interest cancellation with our award-winning Money Max Account program.
If your holiday cash is tangled up with all your other income, it’ll be harder to keep track of. If possible, you may want to move it into a separate account so you’ll know exactly how much you have to work with at any given time. No pesky math or data entry necessary.
That’s another reason the Money Max Account is perfect for holiday budgeting. With your custom budget, you’ll always know your totals, so you can make measured decisions with your money and avoid overspending.
If you’re mailing items to far-away friends and relatives, be sure to account for postage when creating your holiday budget. Depending on what you’re shipping and where you’re shipping it, postage can get pricey real quick.
Of course, you can always ship your online orders directly to their lucky recipients to save some cash. But if you plan to do things the old-fashioned way, don’t let the shipping costs sneak up on you.
As we all know, expenses love to come up at the last minute, and the same goes for holiday expenses. That’s why a little extra cushion in your budget goes a long way.
Whatever you choose as your spending cap, make sure it includes enough to cover gifts or potential travel costs that may come up at the eleventh hour. The holidays are stressful enough, and this safety net will help you stay cool, calm, and collected when the unexpected happens.