Face Your Debt Problems This New Year

The holiday season is meant to be a time to enjoy being with your family and friends. For those with debt stress, it may be difficult to enjoy the holidays when you are experiencing financial difficulties.   After all, holiday expenses can often increase your debt struggles. Relaxation can be nearly impossible with the knowledge that in the New Year, you will have to face the reality of your debt situation. 

For those already carrying a credit card balance, the stress of managing that debt load can lead to poor decision making. Add to that the emotion of the holiday season and the decision to charge all holiday costs to a credit card may seem reasonable. After all, you may think, the cost per month probably won’t be that much more than what you are already managing. On top of this potentially reckless spending, many individuals will also make promises to themselves to gain control of their finances in the New Year and to not worry about debt problems until after the holidays.

This type of thinking is what causes many individuals to become caught up in the cycle of debt. The cost of maintaining that debt may seem to fit within your household budget, but in many cases, the cost of making those minimum monthly payments provides little room to put aside funds for annual or extraordinary expenses. This may mean that when something unexpected comes up, credit is then used to pay for the expense. This erases any progress made towards paying down the debt and if the situation has gone too far, there may not be any room available via credit to cover the cost.

For many individuals, holiday spending can be the start of the cycle of debt; each year the debt load increases and the cost of carrying that debt becomes an even bigger source of stress and anxiety.

If you are caught in an endless cycle of debt, either because of holiday spending or because you’ve used credit to pay for any number of things over the years, let this New Year be the time you regain control of your finances.