How to kiss Christmas credit card bills in 2017 goodbye
OPINION: OK call me the Christmas Grinch. But before you get into anymore debt, now is the perfect time to think about your festive spending habits.
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CHRISTMAS is just one week away but let’s fast forward to January for a moment.
Your Christmas spending hangover has well and truly kicked in, you’ve blown your budget, expanded your waistline and you’re exhausted from the festivities of the past month.
OK call me the Christmas Grinch but before you actually experience this now is the perfect time to stop and think carefully about what do you spend your hard-earned cash this Christmas before whipping start flashing your plastic in the coming weeks.
It’s so easy to spend money that’s not yours — on those skinny little pieces of plastic that slide so easily into your wallets — and worry about the consequences later.
Many of us will watch on the celebrations of friends or family who are off on a fancy holiday or who are sinking expensive bottles of champagne at Christmas — so expensive that you don’t even know how to pronounce their French levels.
But for those who are more careful, spending money that is yours will make you much more happier in the long run, not spending money that isn’t yours.
Latest Reserve Bank of Australia figures show Aussies don’t own a lot of those discretionary items that we have lying around the house or those exotic overseas getaways we go on.
The nation is swimming in a massive $51.4 billion of credit card debt and more than $31.9 billion is accruing interest.
And with rates on some cards as high as 30 per cent this can hit hard once those post-Christmas card bills start arriving in your inbox or by snail mail at the end of January or early February.
But for those shoppers who are yet to even start or finish filling their Christmas stockings it’s still possible to avoid entering the new year in financial distress.
And the easiest way to do this is to stop spending on credit. Right now.
Take those evil little pieces of plastic out of your wallet, hide them somewhere where you won’t use them or better still cut them up.
Australia’s credit card debt bill has hovered around the $50-plus billion mark for years and it doesn’t look like it will get paid off any time soon.
It’s so easy to rack up debt and bury your head in the summer sand in the new year but now is your last chance to make 2017 different.
One financial planner told me recently one of the ways he tries to get his clients to stick to the word many of us hate — budget — is by setting them a test of withdrawing a few hundred dollars each week and not using a card to pay for goods.
Relying just on the cash in your pocket is tougher than you think.
He says many last only a few days before they throw their hands up in the air after running out of money.
The cashless society that we now live in has made spending money easier than ever, I know myself it can be a trap just to wave that card at the checkout without actually handing over physical cash and literally seeing money leave your own hands.
While the festive season can be one of the best times of the year to unwind and soak up the sun, it can also be ones of the worst times financially.
Let’s see if you can turn it around this Christmas and enter new year without a dreaded fiscal hangover.
Originally published as How to kiss Christmas credit card bills in 2017 goodbye
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