Rethinking our Response to Holiday Overspending
Rethinking our Response to Holiday Overspending
Did you overspend for the holidays again?
Whether it’s travel, gifts, decorations, going out, or hosting parties or dinners for friends and family, December is one of the most common months for budget-breaking in American households. And, with New Year’s resolutions right around the corner, it also prompts one of the most common overspending responses: the desire to quickly forget it and “start fresh” tomorrow, where you will, by some magical power that has let you down a million times in the past, be better able to get a handle on your spending.
Consider just how many years you have repeated this pattern, only to end up back here again, overspent in December and overly optimistic about your ability to start fresh on January 1.
This year, instead of pushing those crappy feelings about overspending out the door as quickly as you possibly can, what if you tried a different approach to thinking about your holiday overspending that included just a little bit more time and attention to the present, tuning in to both the emotional and financial data you have in front of you?
If you’re willing to give something new a try, here’s what I recommend:
1) Sit with the discomfort and the consequences of your overspending.
This is not meant to be a shame-inducing exercise. We all need to practice holding discomfort and disappointment around choices we’ve made without shame or guilt. Imperfect choices don’t make us bad people, they make us human. But, to learn from them we must be willing to let ourselves acknowledge how they make us feel.
You shouldn’t shy away from the bad feeling overspending is giving you. You need to spend enough time with it to know it and to be able to bring it up again in the future. Try writing it down or recording a voice memo of it – something that you’ll be able to look at next November to help you remember this feeling as you head into the holiday spending season again.
If you’re having trouble accessing the feelings directly, consider some of the following:
- How has this choice made it harder for your future self? (For example, by creating debt that will have to be paid off or diminishing savings that was meant for something else.)
- What are you giving up in exchange for the spending you just did? Was it worth it?
- Did your spending provide you with any level of enduring satisfaction?
Our brains love to get rid of bad feelings and bad memories as quickly as possible. They are trying to protect us. But having a strong, aversive memory related to the feeling created by overspending at the holidays when the holiday season starts next year is one way to help combat the pressure to overspend for a dopamine hit. If your brain is trying to tell you that all this overspending is going to make you feel great, because “tis the season,” you need to have a stronger memory of how it actually makes you feel when you overspend. And then, you need to pause before you start up with the pattern again. Just take 5 minutes and sit with that feeling before you purchase a single thing for the holidays next year. Look back at your notes and journaling. If it’s uncomfortable to spend 5 minutes thinking about that memory, then do you really want to recreate that scenario all over again?
2) Plan for the financial ask of the holidays.
Pay attention to the details. It’s true, the holidays, for most of us, will likely always ask a bit more from our budget. And while we can pay attention to where and how much we indulge in that ask to keep that overspending to a minimum, we can also plan for that ask where it may feel like an inescapable reality.
For many, it’s probably unrealistic to think that December spending and February spending are going to be identical. But if you sit down and look at the numbers right now, you could just plan to save a little extra for December all throughout the year. If December is running you $1200 more than a normal month for gifts and food, maybe you just need to create a savings bucket for December and put $100 into it each month. The key here is – you have the data right here and now in front of you to look at, and an entire year to save for it. There’s literally no time like the present to see how much holiday spending is costing you and to put a plan in place to save for it ahead of time. And I’d emphasize again, if that’s uncomfortable, that’s all the more reason to do it.
What if that was your only New Year’s money resolution: to save enough through the year to make December not a financially stressful month, and you kept at it all year and were able to get through December without creating that financial bust feeling that it always brings. Think about how much more you might trust yourself to actually see another small financial goal through the next year, feeling good and well prepared for a month whose spending normally has the opposite impact on your feelings about money.
The consequences of overspending on anything that takes you farther away from the financial life you want to be living should be uncomfortable because it is a form of self-harm. If these feelings are not uncomfortable, you’re probably not spending enough time with them. If you don’t take some time to sit with the feelings and the data, you risk heading into the New Year with idealistic planning euphoria that will likely let you down again. To find the lesson in the choices that got you here, you need to spend some time with how they make you feel, and plan for the reality of what predictable and repeatable annual spending, like the holidays, asks of your budget.