The main way to avoid Christmas debt is planning the holidays much ahead of time and following a proper budget so that you can save money for the holidays. But, this time too if you had been busy with your work and your household, and if you had not been able to plan ahead, you can still try and avoid incurring debt during Christmas. You should never think of using credit card during the Christmas or else you will end up deep into debt and then you may have to opt for debt consolidation.
Avoiding debt during Christmas
In order to avoid falling into debt during the Christmas, you will be required to:
- Check your inventory – You should check your inventory, your closet, and some other places where you store items and so on. This can help you save lost of dollars on various kinds of items like Christmas stockings, gloves, decorative items and so on.
- Bring out your creative side – You can lower costs of buying gifts by becoming creative. You can try to make some terms of your own and present it to your near and dear ones. There are even websites that provide you the steps that you can follow to make different kinds of gift items of your own.
- Avoid buying for yourself – As it is holiday time, it is quite obvious that you will be receiving gifts too. So, it would be wise for you to avoid buying any gifts for yourself. This will help you save some more dollars too.
- Use old unused gifts – In order to further save money and avoid debt during Christmas, you can use old gift items to forward it to people. There must be various such gifts that you have stocked up just because you didn’t like it. So, why should you just let these lie and rot; better use it as gifts this year. However, remember to avoid making the mistake of gifting same old thing to a person who had given it.
- Maintain list of guests – You will have to maintain the list of the guests whom you are going to invite or have started to invite. Make the dinner according to their liking in order to avoid confusion and extra expenditure during the Christmas party.
- Buy items only as per your requirement – Make a list of the items which you don’t have and are really required for the Christmas. Buy those items only in order to avoid spending more than you can afford to buy. It is better to stay within your affordability and avoid using credit cards to purchase items during Christmas.
Another strategy that can help you in avoiding debt during Christmas is couponing. You can use the coupons to lower costs of your shopping during the holidays.