Festivals, Fun and Finances: Tips for a Financially Balanced Festive Season

The Festive Season is a time of Joy, Celebration and Togetherness. While the festive season presents a great opportunity to treat yourself and your loved one with goodies, a little caution while spending your hard-earned money can be helpful. The convenience of online shopping, wide variety of choices and attractive deals often make it easy to get tempted and go overboard with our purchases. However, once the festive season has passed, you may be left with unnecessary debt, fewer savings and misalignment of financial goals. It then affects our emotional well-being and may even bring disharmony within relationships.

Here are some Tips to have a financially balanced festive season.

1. Prepare a Budget

Before going out on a shopping spree, make a list of the purchases that you wish to make this season and assign a spending limit for each one of them. Listing your spends in advance will give you more time to hunt attractive discounts and cash back offers on those spend items. The list will also stop you from getting carried away by attractive festive sale offers and buying items you do not need. Try sticking to the list prepared and get those items only if they fit your budget.

2. Be Smart with Festive Gifting

We love giving and receiving gifts. But it is not wise to stretch our finances or disturb crucial financial goals by buying extravagant gifts. Instead of spending all the money on consumables, You can help your loved ones set up an investment.

3. Maintain Sufficient Liquidity

Keep your spending fund separate from the regular liquidity that you maintain in daily life. If you use the daily liquidity to spend during the festive time, you may later find it difficult to pay for your regular expenses. Also, try not to use your emergency fund to pay for festive expenses.

4. Prioritize Debt Repayment

If you have existing debt, allocate a portion of your budget to repay it. Avoid taking on new debt during the festive season.

5. Invest first, spend later

Make sure to save and invest a portion of your money before shopping for the festive season. If you get a festive bonus, allocate some of it for savings or investment rather than spending it all. You can also replace material gifts with acts for a sound financial future. For example, start a SIP in a mutual fund scheme for your spouse / children and attach a goal to it. The goal could be higher education for the children or financial security of the spouse. When you invest with a goal it is likely that you stay focussed in achieving it and not giving in to temptations to overspend.

While festivals are a time to celebrate, it will be more joyous if we avoid overindulgence and build a corpus for our better financial health in future.

Celebrating the festive season while managing money prudently and making intelligent investment choices will ensure that you stay on your path towards financial stability and financial freedom. So consider this festive season as an opportunity to stay committed to your investment journey.