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By Sean A. Kelly
Christmas is a time for giving. However, it may not mean that you may go on a shopping spree that goes way beyond your means and max out your credit cards simply because you wish to give the best gifts to your family and loved ones. Bad debts may come even from the best of intentions. Many good people end up having bad debts up to a point that they have to engage the help of debt management companies like Freedom Debt Relief to help them solve their debt issues because they simply could not do it all on their own. Many of them are in the program because they could not control their credit card habits. Credit cards may help you establish good credit but if they turn out to be more of an enemy than friend, you may want to figure out how to put a stop to all the problems they are causing.
After paying off your debts with the help of a debt management company, you may want to consider spending less on gifts the next time Christmas comes around so that you may not have to end up in the same situation all over again. Of course, the first step that many experts may advice you to do is to put your credit cards on ice so that you may not be tempted to use your cards to buy expensive gifts that you probably could not afford in cash. But how are you going to be able to buy your presents without credit cards? Use cash. If the concept of saving up is strange to you, you may want to start getting familiar with it because it may be the key to help you avoid having to use your credit cards during the holiday season altogether. When you shop with cash, you know your limits as there is always a physical reminder whenever your source of money is about to run out.
Experts may also advice you to create a list of people you may need to buy Christmas presents for. Santa does so why can’t you? When you list down everybody you wish to buy Christmas presents for, you may then start working towards crossing off people from your list. You may have to keep reminding yourself that you are on a tight budget so you may have to limit the number of people who would be getting presents from you. You may want to consider getting one gift for an entire family instead of getting them individual presents. Of course, you may still have to set a budget to know how much you can spend on each person’s gift. It may be rather discouraging at first especially if you find yourself with very limited source of income but you may need to do what needs to be done. At least you may be able to save yourself all the trouble of having to figure ways to fork out more money to pay your credit card debts later on.
Shopping online may also help you spend less on gifts as the web is filled with online shops with discount rates that may be more than what is offered at the mall. Of course, this may rob you the hustle and bustle and the merriment of physically being at a shopping mall to buy your gifts. However, you may probably end up with money saved because of the bigger online discounts. However, you may have to be careful that you may not be tempted into spending more by buying more items than you originally intended. Sometimes it may also be more meaningful if you make the gifts yourself. It would appear to be more personal that you would take the time and effort to work on a gift yourself such as home-made cookies and gift baskets. It may not be expensive but having your own personal touch in your gifts to people would make it even more priceless.
Generally you may be able to spend less on holiday gifts if you seriously try to especially if you have landed yourself in bad debts before. It may seem to others like you are being cheap but you may want to remember that they won’t be the ones paying your debts later on.
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