Skint in January? Planning Finances Post Chrismas
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January can be a tough month for a lot of us. Overspending at Christmas and an early payday can leave many people waiting five or six weeks until their next payday. While we often spend months preparing and planning ahead for Christmas it’s also worth giving some thought to how you’ll get through post-Christmas and avoid being skint in January.
It’s easy to argue that we should all be able to get through January just fine with good budgeting and avoiding overspending. But I’m well aware it’s not always that easy. With all the planning in the world, it’s easy to be carried away at Christmas – even if you’ve saved ahead for gifts and food there’s still Christmas parties and unexpected bills can crop up any time.
Skint in January? Planning Finances Post Chrismas
For us, both being self-employed means a huge drop in income over the Christmas period – blogging is typically quieter and the building site my husband works on will shut down completely for two weeks. Yes, we have emergency savings but we’d rather not dip into these. Instead, we’ve been looking at ways we can start to prepare now to make January a little bit easier on our finances.
1. Create A January Box
Having an emergency food box is something I would recommend everyone has anyway, however, if you’re worried about things being tight in January starting one now might save some stress later down the line. Start filling your box with cheap non-perishables such as pasta, rice, tinned tomatoes, tinned fruit, baked beans and so on. Even if you can only afford to add one or two items a week that are still between 12-24 items by the new year when you might be feeling the strain.
We are buying one or two Christmas food items a week at the moment but from this week I’m going to be adding an item or two a week for our January box too. So, for example, if I buy a box of Christmas biscuits this week I’ll also buy a packet of ordinary biscuits to put away for January.
2. Take Advantage Of Online Shopping discounts
If you’ve never shopped for groceries online before January could the perfect time to start as many places offer quite a big discount on your first shop. A
s an example, Sainsbury’s currently offer £18 off a £60 shop.
While Sainsbury’s is slightly more expensive than Lidl where we usually shop, shopping online means I can take a close look at prices and get as many special offers as possible.
3. Start A January Savings Card
Another way a lot of people save up for Christmas is with a supermarket savings card, where you add a few pounds each week and then have plenty saved for Christmas.
Most supermarkets offer an incentive for this too so an extra few pounds to spend per £50 or £100.
This is a good way to save for Christmas but it could also be a great way to save for January too.
As of this week, we’re going to put £2-£3 a week on a card which will then cover one week of shopping in January when money is tighter. You can do this using a gift voucher which can be topped up.
3. Get Free Food
If money is already tight in the run-up to Christmas and you think you might struggle with some of the above, there are ways to get some food for free – either to top up your ‘January Box’ or that could be used to make Christmas hampers (see this post for details) potentially freeing up more cash before Christmas that could moved to savings.
4. Bank Account Skimming
Bank account skimming is a great way to save money without really noticing it. Simply log on to your internet banking at the end of each day and transfer over any odd pennies to a savings account. For example, if you have £42.56 in you’re account, transfer the 56p over yo your savings.
Do this every day as the various bills and payments come out and you’ll soon have a small pot of savings mounting up.
5. Plan Ahead
A lot of us see January as a fresh start for our finances.
The problem with this is, if you decide to take steps such as cancelling direct debits or cancelling something such as Sky TV in favour of Now TV, usually there is 30 day notice period, so cancelling immediately won’t save any money in the very short term, which is probably when you need it most.
Thinking ahead to January now is what could make all the difference. If you’re worried about your finances after Christmas, ring up and haggle with Sky NOW if you’re out of contract.
Check your bank account this weekend for unused direct debits.
6. Side Hustle For Extra Cash
While January always seems like a great time to start a side hustle – it can take a little while to get organized or for the money to start coming in. Thinking about the fact you might be a little bit short on cash ahead of time means that you can start hustling now and put the money aside for the future. I’ve actually taken up a couple of new side hustles this month for exactly that reason, these include Matched Betting and participating in paid research with respondent.io.
The money will go into a separate savings account ready for if we need it at the start of the year.
7. Start A Penny Jar
I’m sure we’re not alone in having a penny jar that we add our loose change to over the year. While in the past we’ve often used this for a few little extras in the run-up to Christmas, this year we’re going to save it for January when money is likely to be tight.
There’s usually around £40 so that money will cover petrol for a week or the cost of both of our phone bills.
Are you always skint in January? Is it something you’d like to do better at?
