Five ways to pay off your holiday bills faster
If you're reeling from an expensive holiday shopping season, you're not alone. Most households in North America kind of blew the doors off spending over the holidays. Chalk it up to so many feeling the need to make up from last year’s very lean pandemic Christmas season. If you planned out your holiday spending well, awesome. But, many people did not save in advance and turned to credit cards or lines of credit to pay for it.
If this is you, no problem! We’ve got five ways to pay off your holiday bills faster.
Before we dig in, you’ve got to lay all of your bills on the table (or on your tablet) and determine each due date. This allows you to create a map of when they are due, how much is owing, and the interest rate. Then we can take action to drum up some extra cash.
Go through anything that wasn't used, or consumed, during the holidays and return it! This will reduce your outstanding balances on your credit cards. Even if you are on the fence about a return, just do the return. Chances are you don’t need it, and can get by with what you already have.
Cancel and defer ANY unnecessary expenses (big and small) for the month of January, and use that money to pay off your holiday bills. If you wanted to book your holiday this month, for example, you’d delay doing so for a few more months until your bills are under control.
Sell something that you don't want or need. Let’s say you were gifted a new coffee table, put the old one up on Kijiji or Facebook Marketplace and get some cash for it that you can use to pay your bills. While you’re at it, you might as well purge and sell anything else you don’t need that still has value.
Cash in your loyalty points for cash-back on your purchases. If you don't have this option on your credit cards, use other loyalty rewards to pay for your regular expenses like groceries, and re-purpose the original grocery money towards your holiday bills.
If you have the ability to take on extra shifts at work, make more commission, or do some "side-hustle" jobs to make a little extra money, now is the time to do work a little extra.
These quick wins are sure to help clear your holiday bills pronto.
If you can't pay off of your bills this month, you may want to consider a consolidation loan, or line of credit to pay back your bills, but at a reduced interest rate. Neither of these repayment options deal with overspending issues because those are behaviours that take concerted effort to fix. But, they do offer fairly immediate relief, and that can help you to balance your budget, and clear enough head space for you to deal with any pesky overspending habits.
With any lingering debt, do your best to make the largest payment on the most expensive balance so that you eliminate that one first. Then move your focus onto the next one, and so on.
In over your head? Check out our Debt Crusher program. We’ll show you how to clear your debts quickly and you’ll have a blast throughout the program within our accountability community.
