How To Organize Your Finances After The Holidays
The information provided in this blog post on how to organize your finances is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as financial advice. The author of this post is not a professional financial advisor, and the content presented here is based solely on personal opinions, experiences, and research. This blog post may contain affiliate links, which means that I may earn a commission if you click on the link and make a purchase, at no extra cost to you. Please note that I only recommend products or services that I personally use and believe will add value to my readers.
How to organize your finances after the holidays might feel overwhelming (but you’re not alone!)…
The holidays are considered the most wonderful time of the year, but they often cause overspending, and increased credit card debt.
If you’re reading this, you most likely overspent on “holiday magic” and are now feeling that post-holiday financial stress…
No need to worry (or feel bad–because we’ve all done it!)
This post covers everything you need to know to organize your finances and reset after the holidays!
And if you’re looking for even more help organizing and budgeting your finances, stay tuned! I have a special offer here, and at the end!
How To Organize Your Finances Step #1: Review Your Holiday Spending (Without Judging Yourself!)
The first thing you need to do to organize your finances is to review your holiday spending.
I know this may feel uncomfortable, but it is important to know what you spent..
For this step, review your bank and credit card statements, check your online order history, and gather receipts for your purchases.
Next, you need to track your holiday spending totals using the information you gathered.
You can get my spending tracker here, with other free budgeting templates to help you review your purchases and create a post-holiday budget!
Step #2: Identify Your Post-Holiday Financial Status To Organize Your Money
In step two, use the information from step one to identify your current financial status.
To reset and organize your finances, it is important to identify your current status.
- Are you current on bills?
- When are your upcoming bills due?
- How much money do you have available?
- Are your bills / debt payments increasing? How much?
- Did you incur and new debts?
Step #3: Check In With Your December Budget To Reorganize Your Finances
The holidays are ALWAYS the hardest time of year to stick to your budget (if you have one).
Now that we have identified our current finances and confronted our spending, it is time to review the budget we had for December.
During this step, you should:
- Compare your planned budget to your actual spending.
- Look for categories you need to add, adjust, or remove.
- Identify emotional spending habits that may have impacted your budget.
- And lastly, decide how to move forward with your finances.
If you want to learn how to organiz your finances and create a budget that *actually* works for you in the new year, check out my course Beginner’s Budget Blueprint!
BEGINNER'S BUDGET BLUEPRINT
Learn how to budget step-by-step with 4 modules, over 15 video lessons, a 40 page course workbook, + budgeting spreadsheet!
How To Organize Your Finances Step #4: Create a Short-Term Recovery Plan
If you found yourself behind on bills because you overspent, now is the time to create a short-term recovery plan.
The two focuses for this plan should be getting caught up on bills / paying any upcoming bills and addressing your post-holiday debt.
Get my FREE bills and debt organizers to help you create your recovery budget!
Step #5: Use The New Year As A Financial Fresh Start
Thankfully, right after the holidays is the start of a new year, the perfect time to reset your finances and start fresh!
After you develop your short-term recovery plan, it is time to put it into action by creating a new monthly budget blueprint for January!
Use this new beginning to reorganize your sinking funds, set new goals, and build a budget to help you accomplish them. (I teach all of that here, in my course Beginner’s Budget Blueprint!)
Step #6: Establish New Financial Habits To Keep Your Money Organized
For many, even myself, routines, habits, and budgeting tend to fall off track during the holidays.
But now, it is time to rebuild our financial habits.
Identify what habits you quit during this season and create new habits going forward.
Some of my favorite habits for budgeting that you should begin are:
- Weekly budget check-ins
- Tracking spending
- Meal planning to save money
- Setting one “money goal” for the month
- Automating bill payments
And if you want to know more tips and tricks for budgeting and how to organize your finances, check out this post here:
Blog Post: 6 Tips To Better Your Finances Today
Bonus Tip: Create a Plan for Next Year’s Holiday Spending
It’s never too early to be thinking about next year’s holiday season, and since we have reviewed this year’s holiday spending, we can use that information to avoid holiday debt and create a holiday budget for next year!
I highly recommend creating a sinking fund for the holidays early in the year!
Even if you put $5-$10 a week into this sinking fund, it will help ease the holiday burden when it is time to begin shopping for the season!
The biggest thing I want you to remember is not to be hard on yourself if you overspent this year or racked up more credit card debt! It happens to us all!
The only way to move forward is to be honest with yourself, create an action plan to organize your finances, and build a budget that actually works for you!
My husband and I went from preforeclosure to paying off $30K in debt in one year by organizing our finances, creating an action plan, and building a budget that helped us accomplish our goals.
And that’s why I built Beginner’s Budget Blueprint, the course that takes you step by step through the budgeting process that we used and still use today to help us pay off that debt and become more financially secure than ever!
Trust me. If we can do it, so can you!
Ready to organize your finances and get back on track financially? Click here to start Beginner’s Budget Blueprint and take your first step toward a secure financial future!
