Analyzing the Holiday Financial Setbacks
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| Photo by zbili |
Last week in my journal I was hinting that I’d roll up all my "holiday bad news" into one post. Well here it is! Please note that I’m not exactly happy with this, but admit total fault in letting it happen. This is the kind of major setback we simply don’t need in our lives.
The "well, this’ll be the LAST time before we start the budget" arguments started flying around back around Thanksgiving when all the relatives were visiting and talking about all their glorious Christmas plans. (Can you say "Keeping up with the Joneses"???)
That was stupid.
The Tally
| Debt | Amount |
| Credit Card | $ 4800 |
| Store Card | $ 1500 |
| Hardware Store Card | $ 200 |
| Total | $ 6500 |
I can hear it now… "Holy… you spent what? What the heck did you get for all that?"
Here’s the real kick in the pants. Not much. I can account for about $1000 in gifts. Probably another $1000 from all the traveling & eating out we did when my grandpa died. The rest is just what happened once we broke away from sticking to the budget when family was here at Thanksgiving through to about January. And when I say broke away…I mean shattered it by an extra TWO THOUSAND dollars a month. (I think we caught up with a lot of medical bills during this time too, but come on…)
Onward we march
So, I’ve updated my net worth resource page. Luckily we’ve only gone down by about $2500. Somehow I managed to overpay my student loan principal by a month as well as drop my overall balances down while my 401K balance kept going up. So now that we’ve got this mess to clean up, I guess our tax return isn’t going to be available for the 2nd mortgage like we’d planned when we took on the sub-prime loan.
Stupid…
On a side note, we’ll be getting the additional $3000 rebate if all goes as expected this week in congress. You can bet your big toe we won’t be spending much of that when it comes in!
Anyone else out there just totally fall apart during the holidays? I’ve heard so much about how everyone did so well this Christmas with Dave Ramsey quoting the average household spent only $700 on gifts this year. We probably doubled that for gifts and went way over grocery/entertainment/travel budgets making the worst holiday impact we’ve ever had. So how did you all fare during the last three months with respect to prior years?
Debtbeater
February 4th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
OH my goodness! Mr. Debtbeater, I can feel your pain! We just found out our credit card debt is going to increase by $6000 within the next twenty days. You are a real trooper to keep going with this setback, hang in there. Things can only get better.
February 4th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
6K in 20 days? What on earth for? Not that I’m judging, I mean…look at me…it’s just, wow that’s a lot.
On a side note, it looks like I may be getting a little more for my tax return than I’d expected. Hopefully things won’t be so far off track by this time next month.
February 6th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Yes, I agree it’s a lot. My post URL is somewhat revealing as to the peculiar why and how… it’s child support that my husband owes to me, his ex-ex-wife…
http://outofdebtagain.blogspot.com/2008/02/past-due-child-support.html
Glad to hear your income tax return will help. Keep us posted!
February 12th, 2008 at 3:34 am
[…] Debtbeater analyzed their holiday financial setbacks, explaining how a one-time splurge outside the budget (for no good reason) can seriously impact […]
February 12th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Mr. Debtbeater, Look how far you’ve come. I’ll bet that up until now you would have spent that money and had a debt hangover until at least June. I know I would have. But here it is February and you’re getting yourself refocused and back on track. Obstacles are always in our way. We just have to figure out how to get around them.
February 12th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
I found your site through Wealthy1. This post is very similar to what happened to us, with the figures being very close. Our citibank card was 6800.00 when all was said and done. I can account for $2000.00 being gifts, $1000.00 for a new computer for my daughter (hers died, and she’s a senior in college). But what happened otherwise??? I have since “gotten over it”, but it’s the reason I started blogging. I do not want a repeat on next Christmas!
February 12th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Thanks for the encouragement wealthy_1. I guess that’s all that’s really left to do is to just look forward and learn the lesson.
And at least I’m not alone on this. Not that I’m glad there’s others. But let’s definitely hold ourselves accountable so that we don’t let this happen again!
Thanks for stopping by!