There is a saying that January is the longest month of the year and that is because it happens to be the month right after December, the one month where we get to spend carelessly and then feel the consequences the next month which happens to be January.
Growing up, my dad made it a priority to teach myself and my siblings the importance of saving. He even made sure to reward us with gifts whenever we saved a certain amount of money, it was his own way of motivating us to save more.
For me and my siblings, it was a healthy competition, one that helped cultivate a habit of saving for us but we all had one problem. Whenever it got to December, we always ended up spending all of our savings on irrelevant stuff, things like fireworks or toys that mostly were sold during these festive seasons. So it was almost as if we basically were saving throughout the whole year just to spend it during the festive seasons, although that never were our intentions.
But we were kids at the time and things like peer pressure had really huge influence on us so whenever we saw our friends buying those fireworks or toys, we too were always tempted to get one for ourselves. Luckily for us, our dad didn't really put much interest on what we did with our money, so we had a little bit of freedom to get whatever toy we wanted as long as it was with our own money.
Photo by Alicia Christin Gerald
But one would think that now that I'm grown, that I would know a little bit better and learn how to budget myself during these times, but I've come to realize that really isn't always the case. Unless you refuse to leave the comfort of your home, the festive season is that one time where you get to see a lot of really cool stuff that you didn't even know you wanted, things that are usually not in front of the store on other days.
Then you find yourself pulling out your credit card and doing a lot of unplanned expenses. Speaking from experience, I've tried to place a budget on the amount of money I plan on spending on times like this and I had failed everytime. I always find myself spending more than intended and I never regret it until next month, when all the bills starts coming in and I no longer have enough cash to settle all of it, that's when the regret starts setting in.
So if there's one thing I do now, it's that I try to lock a certain amount of money that I have no plans of spending, at least for a month. Locking that money means I won't be able to access it, even if I'm dying until the timer placed on it has expired. So I always do that and just try to limit my spending based on the money left on my account.
I've tried it during other months and it has worked perfectly fine for me, so hopefully it also gets to work very well for me during this month of December. That way, I don't get no regrets next month when those bills start coming in.