H OW TO R E C OV E R F R O M
holiday
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MADE BY ASHLEY WHITE
The festive decorations, the
ugly Christmas sweater parties,
the gift exchanges—these are
a few of our favorite things,
however, the costs add up
quickly. If you overspent this
holiday season, we’ve got you
covered. MADE sat down with
money maven, Dominique
Broadway for advice on how
to regroup and get your coins
back in order in 2018…
Why do you think we go overboard
with our spending during the
holidays?
DB: I think people go overboard
because they really get caught up in the
season. They start making these lists of
everyone they want to buy gifts for and
it’s everyone they’ve met throughout the
year—literally! Then afterward, you’re
looking at your bank account like, “Why
did I overspend? How did I so caught
up in it?” Also, I think people are so
worried about what people think of them
and their gift-giving that they’ll often-
times overcompensate with their gifts
and give gifts that they can’t necessarily
afford to give.
So you overspent this holiday sea-
son—now what?
DB: Don’t beat yourself up about it too
much, but what you need to do is
immediately figure out what your
strategy is to knock this debt off. You
don’t want to have this debt lingering to the
next holiday. Hopefully, if you did overspend,
it won’t affect how you’ll pay your bills next
month. That happens to people—they spend
so much during the holiday and then January
rolls around and the bills come and they’re
like, “Oh, no. I don’t have it.” I would say figure
out how much you overspent and immediately
figure out what your strategy is going to be.
Does that mean you’re going to get a part
time job to kill some of that debt off? Does
that mean in January you’re going to have to
cut back in certain areas? You don’t want the
holidays to affect your savings or to put you in
a deeper hole.
In order to get back on track financially, here
are a few tips from Experian:
1. Evaluate Your Overall Financial Situa-
tion.
This won’t be fun, but now it’s time to really
take a look at how much damage has been
done.
Examine your entire financial situation including
your budget, your long and short term financial
goals. You also need to write down all of your
debts, payment due dates, minimum payment
amounts, interest rates and the timeframe in
which you would like to pay down your debt.
Remember, you can’t tackle your finances if
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