Celebrate Smart, Not Broke

It’s the season of celebration once again. This is more like the time that most people have been waiting for to literally spend so much on celebrating one thing or another. For some, this is one of the reasons they’ve been working from January till now. It’s already the last month of the year, so who wouldn’t want to celebrate as much as they can? This is one time of the year that I see people go out of their way to do things just because they want to make sure they are part of those celebrating and in as much as I can understand their actions to an extent, it is good that we look critically at how we can avoid unnecessary spending during this time because the new year is coming soon. And we don’t want to start the year as borrowers.

So for this week’s hivelearners 2nd edition, we are asked to share our thoughts on Celebrating On a Budget. Budgeting in simple terms means planning our expenditures before hand. When it comes to celebrating, it is essential that we give time to planning out every possible thing we know we will spend before the time we plan for that celebration. Waiting until deadline before planning for our celebrations will only make us run into more debt and that will lead us to so much frustration and regrets.

Remember, celebrating is good and it won’t be wise to start feeling regret after our celebrations. One way to celebrate on a budget is by having an estimation of the things we need to make our celebration worthwhile. Once we have that in place, the second thing to do is to start saving right from the start of a new year for it. Usually, our major celebrations this period is Christmas and end of year parties and these two celebrations only come at the end of the year. So we have a very clear idea of when it will be.

If we don’t want to go broke because of these celebrations, the good thing we can do for ourselves is to save well for it. And you can’t save if you don’t have anything substantial doing. But if you end up not saving enough by the end of the year, it’s good to stick to what you have saved for your celebration rather than spending more than you have saved and end up in debt. It’s actually really tempting this time of the year to want to borrow money to enjoy ourselves so we won’t be left behind but that is one way we will start growing broke if we are not careful.

If at all we need to borrow, it shouldn’t be for something we know very well we can do without. Celebrations are good but they are things that I believe we can do without if we don’t have enough for it at a time. There will always be another opportunity to celebrate other things rather than going broke or being in debt. Personally, my plan for this year’s celebration is going to be based on what I have and by God’s grace, it will be just enough and I believe won’t leave me broke.

Thanks for reading.

Image used is mine.