The festive season is almost here and you must be excited to celebrate this auspicious period with your family and friends. Diwali is a festival which is celebrated in whole India with full enthusiasm and happiness. It is easy to get carried away by big billion sales and massive discount offers that fill your newspapers or online space. We often rush into our purchases courtesy some aggressive advertising during the festival season.
1. Plan a Festive Budget
Budgeting is 1st and most important step to smartly manage spending during the festive season or in general. Budget is always advised whether you are investing somewhere or even for your monthly expense. When you set a budget limit it means you have control of your money and on your expenditures. So this Diwali, making a budget should be the first thing that you should do. That’s the beginning for saving money or to avoid overspending.
2. Curbing Expectations
First things first, understand your financial position in life, embrace it and alter your needs and expectations accordingly. If you have just taken a huge home loan or emergency cash loan, curb your expectations of a lavish festival season. Don’t plan on having a fancy week-long getaway for Christmas holidays or spend on expensive clothes when the strings in your purse are already too tight. Be prepared to up cycle your old festive clothes and reuse them to make a style statement!
3. Buy Products having Utility
Experts also advise consumers to buy goods having great utility and durability. For example, the purchase of electronic items will hold significance since a lot of work now happens through their effective usage. Frivolous expenses that would otherwise happen on items during these festive times can be avoided.
4. Track your Spending
Tracking or keeping a record of your spending is the second most important move you need to make during festivals. Your budget does no good if you don’t effectively track your spending. Try to make a separate festival fund. This will make it easier to separate festivals spending from regular, day-to-day expenses.
5. Say NO to borrowing cash
This Diwali you need to take a pledge to not to borrow any amount of credit for spendings. Make a budget plan, maintain separate fund and keep a record of your expenses. In fact, you should not borrow any kind of loan as several banks and lending institutions come up with several loan offers during the festive times.
6. Avoid Impulse Shopping
You may get things on great discounts, as the festive season is best for business houses and brands to make money. To increase their sales, all the businesses (both stores and shopping portals) come up with many offers like-bumper sale, festive season sale, end of session sale and many more. Once you see offers you start shopping in an impulse way because at that time it is very difficult for anyone to resist the temptation of shopping. However, you should ideally avoid getting into such a situation.
7. Prioritise Needs over Wants
Reduce wants by a small percentage say 20 percent and invest that money. This way consumers will not deprive themselves of the joy of shopping, but at the same time, they would be investing for future too.
8. Opt for Investment and Saving this Diwali
Why not make a move that will help you to avoid doing any unnecessary expense instead of investment and secure your future. Saving is also not enough so you should plan something for investment this Diwali which will affect your finances in a positive way for many years. In fact, there is a tradition of celebrating Dhanteras in which people purchase gold and silver.
9. Resist Peer Pressure
A lot of people even spend on otherwise useless purchases as everybody around them is doing so. However, experts tell that one shouldn’t spend just because others are spending.