If you’re among the 1.2 million Canadians who will have called in sick this past Monday or Friday to take advantage of the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales, you might be feeling the pain of an empty wallet, battered ego, or at worst, a destroyed savings account. You can recover, and here’s how.
Assess the damage
What exactly did you spend? Take a look (whether you want to or not) at your financial statements. Find out exactly how much you spent, where and when. Check to see if there are any mistakes, did you pay full price for a sale item? Were you charged twice for a single item? Were you charged for something you didn’t buy? Cashiers are people too, and can make mistakes After you know the actual figures, you can devise a plan to get back on track by implementing a budget and savings goal for next month.
Prioritize your debt.
Just as you prioritized the items you bought over the weekend from “must have” to ‘this could be useful for a specific situation but not for everyday”, you will need to rate your debt from the most important to the least. Pay off your highest interest debt first, and then move on to the next. Repeat this until you have paid off all of your credit cards/loans/Lines of credit. It’s the most efficient way to do so.
Get your credit score back
you may have done some serious damage to your beacon if you’ve gone into overdraft, missed a loan payment, or have maxed out credit cards. Prioritizing your debt can help get you back track by reducing some of your most damaging debts. If you can’t make your entire payments or large chunks at a time, make sure to pay at least the minimum balance across all your outstanding debt sources to help improve your beacon. You should also set up pre-authorized payments to ensure you don’t get dinged for late charges. Every effort no matter how big or small is a step in the right direction.
Cut back
Now that you have a plan in place to pay back some of the debt you’re racked up, look at what you can afford to cut out this month. Deduct from the areas that wouldn’t alter your lifestyle too much. Eat one less meal out a month. Use one less gigabit of data on your phone. Drive less and reduce the cost of your gas well as temptation to spend while your out and about. Get a coffee machine instead of buying Tim Hortons everyday. You would be surprised how much you can save by reducing a few of your monthly habits.
Save up for next year!
Now that you know how much your likely to spend around the holidays, start saving early. Its easy to put away a few dollars a week, and incredible how much it adds up to over time. If you saved $10 a week until next Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend you would have a total of $520.
Set your goals now.
If you need help getting back on track visit www.fastaccess.ca.