Let Your Card Hibernate This Festive Season
Fine you know how much your mortgage hurts your pay packet every month or how much money your gas is guzzling away. But do you know what percentage of your income should actually be allocated to these expenses? Chances are you probably don’t and are just paying money as and when the charges come up. And believe me, if you are deep in debt, probably is one of the biggest causes is – your inability to budget your income or your expenses.
Today, it has become so easy to pay for anything. You just have to take what you want and flash your card. Doesn’t matter if you really cannot afford whatever it is that you want as long as you have a couple of cards to pay with. Isn’t it time we took control of our lives? I mean it is easy to point blame – the government; the credit card industry; the shopping malls that entice us and even our kids who keep demanding for more and more.
But isn’t there something like our own judgment. Today, most American adults behave like little children who’ve been allowed to have a free run in an ice-cream factory. We just cannot seem to know when enough is really enough. We continue on this pleasure trip of ours till we get the bills and then we fret and worry. Now you have the festival season coming. Bet you’re gonna go out there and splurge on gifts for just about everybody. After all it is the festive season, a time for giving. Yes, it is a time for giving but only if the gift is within your means.
Let’s begin on a little belt-tightening, budgeting exercise. My first tip will be handy for the festive season: Leave home without your credit cards. Decide how much you will spend on gifts and take that amount of money with you when you go shopping. The figure should be affordable and you shouldn’t take a loan. Ensure that you get all your gifts within the fixed amount and once you run dry, come back home. Pronto!
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