Imagine celebrating the holidays debt-free, with a clear budget and without a financial hangover in the new year. Too good to be true? Not at all! This episode (the second in our series) will walk you through my favourite shopping strategies that will not only help you stick to your budget but also snag the best deals. We’ll also discuss how loyalty programs and rewards can be a game changer, and learning to see unused items as potential extra income. With these tips in your arsenal, the holiday season will be a joy, not a debt trap.
But why stop at just the holidays? As we gear up for the last few weeks of December, it’s the perfect time to reassess our financial habits. I'll help you set achievable financial goals, track spending, and prioritize expenses. Budgeting doesn't have to be a bore, and finding additional sources of income can be even easier than you think. Even better, I’ll be here to support you through my financial coaching services, helping you chart your path to financial independence. So let's seize the reins of our financial future together and work towards financial stability, starting right now.
Join the The Financial Moment community on: Instagram Facebook Website Email: info@thefinancialmoment.com
Grab this FREE guide with 10 easy tips to keep your budget on track!
Imagine celebrating the holidays debt-free, with a clear budget and without a financial hangover in the new year. Too good to be true? Not at all! This episode (the second in our series) will walk you through my favourite shopping strategies that will not only help you stick to your budget but also snag the best deals. We’ll also discuss how loyalty programs and rewards can be a game changer, and learning to see unused items as potential extra income. With these tips in your arsenal, the holiday season will be a joy, not a debt trap.
But why stop at just the holidays? As we gear up for the last few weeks of December, it’s the perfect time to reassess our financial habits. I'll help you set achievable financial goals, track spending, and prioritize expenses. Budgeting doesn't have to be a bore, and finding additional sources of income can be even easier than you think. Even better, I’ll be here to support you through my financial coaching services, helping you chart your path to financial independence. So let's seize the reins of our financial future together and work towards financial stability, starting right now.
Join the The Financial Moment community on: Instagram Facebook Website Email: info@thefinancialmoment.com
Grab this FREE guide with 10 easy tips to keep your budget on track!
You're listening to Elevate your Paycheck, the podcast that is dedicated to transforming your financial journey. I'm Carolyn, your host and money coach that will guide you out of that paycheck to paycheck cycle and onto a path towards financial independence. Are you ready? Let's do this. Hello, welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker 1:
I'm Carolyn, your money coach, so I'm guessing by now you're kind of knee deep into the holiday season. You probably come to some work parties by now and, if you're super organized, you probably have already bought and purchased all your gifts. So I thought I would pick up where we left off last week, talking about the 12 ways to have a debt-free holiday, but before that, I just want to say I had a beautiful time at my birthday party last week. It was so amazing to have all my friends and family there and just be able to share the moment with them. I also want to thank all of you for your birthday wishes as well. A lot of you reached out on Instagram and sense of love, so I do appreciate that and I hope that you were one of the lucky ones to receive my done for you service within the coaching package that I offered last week. Okay, so for today, we're going to talk about a couple more ways that you can ensure to have a debt-free holiday. Now I want to say this is probably my favorite thing, but for some of you you may not feel the excitement that I do, but it's to implement smart shopping strategies. So what I mean by that is you've already done the list, you've created the budget, you know exactly how much you're going to spend, and now it's time to get out there, and there are two ways to do this right. There's the online and or in-person, and, trust me, I have done both, so I am well versed in this area.
Speaker 1:
So for some of you, you were able to maximize Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There were a ton of sales, both in-person in stores and online, and if you knew at that point of what it was you were going to buy, that was the time to buy it right, because most of the time, that is the biggest sale of the year. But what we're noticing now the trend is is that leading up to back Friday, there are a lot of sales. After Cyber Monday, there are still a lot of sales. So, again, if you are very specific about what it is that you're going to purchase, you are probably able to find that deal, but you're gonna have to do a little bit of combing and shopping. The one thing you may notice is that a lot of things may be sold out by this point right, because of the big, massive sales that have happened over the last few weeks, that things are starting to dry up like. Inventory is starting to become less and less. So this is where you're gonna have to be a little bit creative and not be so specific about exactly what it is you wanna buy if you're at this point and still shopping.
Speaker 1:
So do your research right. Go online, see all the different shops that have the item that you want available, do your price checking, and then I would also head into the stores, because you never know if the price online is different from what is in the store. If you're buying something that is a little bit on the more expensive side, then I suggest you really do your research when it comes to making that purchase. If your items are on the lower budget, and then don't waste your time running around to a million different places, you know, just kind of hit the button and make the purchase and move on. Sometimes we think we're doing a good thing by running all over the place to find that deal, when, in fact, if the amount of money that you're really spending on that item is not worth the time and effort that you're spending like? Have you seen the traffic out there these days? It's insane and the gas prices are high. So you wanna factor these things in. If you're purchasing an item for that's around $50, you don't need to go to four or five, six different stores to find that particular item, because you're spending your time, your energy and your money driving all around just looking for that deal.
Speaker 1:
Now, another part of my strategy is to really use loyalty programs and rewards at this time of year, right? So I stack them up and I make sure that when it's time to cash out, it's something that I wanted to purchase, maybe for a gift or for my groceries or for travel or whatever it is, so that alleviates some burden off my budget. Now, if you're like me and sometimes you forget what your budget was when you walk into the store, it's like you magically it disappears from your mind then you want to have these things on your phone or printed out so that you have it on you. But even better than that is to only take the cash that you've allocated with you when you're shopping. So I know a lot of us are into using debit or credit to make most of our purchases, and there are some safety risks when you carry around a lot of cash. But what I'm saying is, if you have a specific budget for the particular items that you're buying let's say you have three people on your list that you need to buy for and you know how much it is that you want to spend perhaps withdraw that money and stick within the cash that you have in hand to purchase those particular gifts. This will force you to stick to budget and leave those debit and credit cards at home.
Speaker 1:
Okay, we've talked a lot about spending and budgeting, but there are also some other things we can consider to ensure that we're having a debt-free holiday. Now, this is the possibility of earning some extra income over the holidays. So we know that we're spending a little bit more, but maybe we can earn a little bit more income to kind of offset what we're spending. So in order to do that, maybe now is a good time to kind of comb through and see if you have any unused items that would be of use to other people, perhaps for gifts, right? So a lot of the time when we purchase throughout the year, there are things in our house that still have the tags on it. We never used it, and perhaps it's something that someone else could get some benefit from. So take a look, right. Look in your closet, look in the basement, look, you know, anywhere you restore items, there may be some things that you can just sell and get a quick win from. This is also a time where maybe picking up some part-time work might be possible. You know, I know it's busy, but stores and different organizations may need some extra help during this time period. So picking up some part-time work or boosting the number of hours you're working within your own job may be a possibility, or even kind of exploring a side hustle that you've always been thinking about, right? Because now is the time when people are spending, and so why not try to make a little bit of extra income during this holiday season? Now I just wanna let you guys know that I am no stranger to these strategies. I've talked a lot about my own personal shopping strategies, so I do that all the time, but I haven't maybe mentioned that I've also tried to bring in additional income throughout my life.
Speaker 1:
I once had a t-shirt business. My daughter was just born and I was on mat leave and I get these kind of crazy ideas when I have time on my hands, and probably this is when she was sleeping through the night. But anyway, this t-shirt business had all these different types of logos on baby t-shirts. I would sell them. I designed the logos and then I would put them on a screen printing onto the t-shirt and I would go to all these different Christmas markets and sell the t-shirts. Now it was quite the business. I developed the website all by myself. That was back in, I wanna say, 2005,. That's when she was born, oh my goodness. Anyway, and yeah, I would go to the different Christmas markets and just sell them, and that was my extra money that I made to really help me through a holiday season. So it can be done, right.
Speaker 1:
Just think about what your passions are, what you're excited about, and it's going to reflect in what it is that you're doing. And it really just starts with family and friends, right. A lot of the time, a lot of my purchases were from people that I knew we were all having babies around the same time and so they're like, oh, my goodness, such a cute t-shirt. I have to get it right, and it just kind of word of mouth. And then I went to the Christmas markets and more people knew about me and so it just kind of explodes from there. So don't be afraid to try something different, right? That was way outside of my forte in the finance world. So have fun with the creative process and really think about how you can just bring a little extra income to help you through this season.
Speaker 1:
Now there's also the impulse purchases that tend to be made around this time of year, and the reason is because we're out and about and doing more shopping than we normally do on a regular basis, right? So, for example, if you're going to a big box store, maybe you're gonna pick up some groceries, you have your list and you're ready and you head inside. Well, this is the time when these stores offer all sorts of different attractive things, right? And you're gonna walk by there and you're gonna be like, oh, maybe I should get that, or oh, you know what, I might as well pick up this. And you really have to exercise some discipline here, because the stores, they know exactly what they're doing, right, they are placing those items in your path for a purpose, right, so you pick them up. You know, when you're in a shopping line, there's always items like kind of lined up before you actually go to pay, and this is done for a particular reason it's because you're waiting. So you're waiting. You're looking around, you're thinking, oh well, maybe I'll just grab a bag of chips, or oh, I'll just grab a chocolate bar or whatever it is that they have kind of while you're waiting and it's a purchase that you weren't planning to make, it's not on your list, it's probably something that you don't even need. But you're there, you're bored and you're looking at what they have to offer. So, this impulse buying, we need to kind of rail it back right, rail it back in, because this is where the slippery slope is. We end up purchasing things that weren't part of what we originally were intending to buy and that can really blow our budget out of the water. So how can we practice some discipline in this area? You gotta stick to that list.
Speaker 1:
And then, next up, I really want you to comb through the list you created from last week and identify what your priority expenses are. So think of the budget that you created as your wish list. You know these are all the things that you wanted to do. You've totaled it up at the bottom and I'm assuming you have that money to pay for it. Now let's say you don't right. You didn't create a budget throughout the year and now you'd have to scramble and find the money to be able to do the things that you want to do. So this is where prioritization is really key. You're gonna have two columns, so I want you to create a good, pull out another piece of paper and create two columns. One is essential and one is non-essential.
Speaker 1:
So as you go through that list that we talked about last week, identify what is your absolutes, what are your must-haves, and once you have that, let's just see what that totals. Now is that total a little bit more reasonable? If you haven't saved and are not going to be making any additional income throughout the season, then it's gonna have to come from your main source of income. So something has to give at some point, right? So as we look at our list, really identify what is high priority and then you know what. Maybe you do save some money. You know when you're out shopping, you're implementing the strategies and you have some extra at the end so you can pull over some other items from the list that weren't a high priority from before.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so that's kind of a big list for you this week. I want you to really implement some strategic shopping strategies. I want you to consider making a little extra money over this time period and then, finally, I really want you to identify and prioritize your expenses. And if you're still looking for ways to tighten up your budget, I do have a free guide. If you go to thefinancialmomentcom backslashbudget-tips, I have much more extensive information in there on how to kind of just tighten up that budget before we head into the new year.
Speaker 1:
So this was a shorty but a giddy, and I really want you to work on these strategies as we move into the last couple weeks of December. So have a great week, guys, and we will see you same time, same place. Thanks for listening to the Elevate your Paycheck podcast. If you love this episode and need deeper support, head to thefinancialmomentcom backslashsupport to see how we can support you, no matter where you are at today. We help our clients organize their finances, create savings, eliminate debt and create a roadmap to their financial goals, which makes them more in control than they ever dreamed possible. So head to thefinancialmomentcom backslashsupport and make this the next step in your financial journey.