Lynda Moore says if you're struggling to recover from holiday spending, look into your future and plan for next year, so you can enjoy it without post-Christmas holiday blues

I don’t know about you, but for me, Christmas is a distant memory.  I had a fun break and then it was back into work mode.  I think we have also all been shaken by the weather events and the loss of life that went with it, that has certainly taken the glow off the holidays as well.

Talking about money with all of this going seems unimportant in the scheme of things, but there is probably a not so gentle reminder coming for a lot of households.  The credit card statement, the after-pay payments that pop up a bit too regularly, or maybe a bank account in overdraft that you didn’t quite plan for.

Now Christmas is over for another year, those post-Christmas money blues might be starting to make themselves felt.  It’s time to establish that resolve again and get yourself back on track.  Whether it’s the exercise regime and healthy eating with a bit more rigour, to lose those extra kilos.  Let’s not forget the finances, they will probably need a bit of adjusting as well.

Here are 7 tips that will help you get your post-Christmas money blues under control.

Acknowledge that you have gone a bit overboard.
It is easy to get carried away with the emotion of Christmas and the urge to buy gifts and all the Christmas parties and those social functions.  It’s okay to fall off the budget and diet wagon, the key thing is to realise you have and get back on pronto.

Work out what you’ve spent.
Calculate what you have spent over and above your normal monthly spending.  Go online, have a look at your bank accounts and credit cards for December.  Add up your total withdrawals (including food, cash, etc) and compare this to a normal month.  This will give you a good indication of how much extra you have spent.  Sort the list between your fixed costs, such as mortgage, rent, power, insurance, phone, etc. and your ‘other’ or discretionary spending.  You will find that it is the discretionary spend that has gone up.

Quantify the overspend.
Once you know what you spent, figure out how you managed to spend it.  Did it come out of savings or was your credit card (or buy now pay later deals) very active?  Where it came from will determine how you go about sorting it out.

If you ‘borrowed’ the money from savings
Then increase your regular savings for the next few months and pay it back.  Once you have paid it back, keep adding the extra to your savings account.  Better still, open a Christmas account and by next Christmas you will have enough tucked away so you won’t find yourself with these post-Christmas money blues again.

Credit card/ Buy now pay later
If the spending is on a credit card and you didn’t pay the whole amount off, you’ll have the interest to contend with as well.  At the beginning of the year is a good time to shop around and see if any banks are offering a new credit card with 0% interest (or near zero) for a period of time.  Then transfer the balance to the new card, cut up the old one and spread payments to clear the credit card debt, over the interest free period.  If you can’t do this, then you are going to have to wear the extra expense of the interest and pay extra on your credit card until it is clear. As my mentor David Krueger likes to say, “credit card interest is the price we pay for making bad decisions”.

Find extra money.
Another method to get on top of your Christmas debt is to find extra money over the next few months until you are back on track.  So, go back to your ‘normal’ month of withdrawals and see what you can cut back on to get yourself on track again.  Make sure you are realistic, just do a bit of pruning here and there, rather than slashing and burning.  If you are too restrictive, it won’t work.

You might be able to do a bit of decluttering and sell a few things that you no longer want, but someone else does.  Make sure any money you make from selling stuff, goes towards your Christmas overspend.

Start planning for next Christmas!
To ensure that those post-Christmas money blues don't show up next year, start planning.  By now you will have a good idea how much you want to spend next Christmas, so, decide now (or as soon as you are back in the black) to transfer a fixed amount each time you get paid to a Christmas savings account.  You will be amazed at how much better you’ll feel this time next year!

For those of you with school age children, the next round of expenditure is about hit you as well.  All the back-to-school expenses.  They also come up every year, and we seem to conveniently forget about them until they are on top of us.

Look into your future and decide now whether you want to be scrambling to pay for everything post-Christmas, or you could make a good decision now, to start small and plan for next year, so you can enjoy the holiday without the Post Christmas holiday blues.

*Lynda Moore is a Money Mentalist coach and New Zealand’s only certified New Money Story® mentor. Lynda helps you understand why you do the things you do with your money, when we all know we should spend less than we earn. You can contact her here.