To get everyone in a festive Christmas spirit, let me offer this cautionary tale of Christmas Debt.
The 12 Days of Christmas DEBT
12 Months of Agonizing Payments
Have you paid off last Christmas yet? How about the one before that?
11 Maxed Out Credit Cards
How much room do you have on those cards? Really?
10 Overdrafts a leaping
Really, how much are you paying in overdraft fees? Just because your bank balance can show a negative value doesn’t mean it should always be that way!
9 Minimum Payments
Do you realize you will pay that off in 20 years with those minimum payments, or possibly 50 years? Minimum payments forestall the inevitable.
8 Balance Transfers
Shuttling debt from one credit card to another is not solving the problem. Juggling chainsaws will lead to a messy end, which is what this is.
7 Cashed in Emergency Funds
Is Christmas debt an emergency? I don’t think that is the emergency you were planning.
6 Pay Day Loans
Pay Day Loans could be starting a death spiral in your finances that will lead you to Day (3)
5 Gold Reclamations!
Did your Grandmother leave you that ring to help you cash it in for pennies on the dollar to pay off debt?
4 Calling Collection Agencies
These are not the bogus ones you get emails. These are the real ones
3 Calls to Insolvency Trustees
They can help, but you can’t keep doing this yearly either.
2 Calls to your family for an emergency loan
You do have to pay those back, you realize?
1 Mortgage Refinance
Using the equity in your house to pay for consumer debt is a terrible thing.
Yes, not very festive, but ultimately a bit too true. I go to Church, and I am confident the Christmas season is not to bankrupt you. It is at a time to get together with family and friends.
Wonder why you dislike this time of the season? How many of the Days of Debt on the list are you facing in January?
Previous Boxing Days?
I have written on the topic of Boxing Day a few times.
- Boxing Day? Big Bloody Deal! was my first rant about the day. In 2006 there were sales, but were they that exciting?
- Let the Boxing Quarter Begin does sum up the entire concept of Boxing “day”, it just keeps going on.
- Just because it’s on sale, another classic rant about impulse buying the day after Christmas, 2008.
- Holiday Cheer Volume 4 got lazy in 2009 and just put out a list of posts from that year.
- Carnival of Money Stories: Happy Pseudo Boxing Day! Back in the day when Blogging Carnivals were all the rage (2009).
- Sales and What is the Price?!? started to figure out the connection between Black Friday and Boxing Day sales. Neither really saved you much, did they? Not really in 2010.
- Happy Pseudo Boxing Day was just really a best of kind of post, no real commentary on Boxing Day itself.
- Mayhem and Sunday’s Best (on Monday) it seems that Boxing Day was an excuse for me to post a best of posts list? This article seems to prove the point?
- Advice for the day in 2012? Don’t buy crap, which is good advice any time. If something you need is on sale, buy it, if not, don’t!
- One Thing You Can Buy on the day is to buy something you need.
- Mayhem is always present on Boxing Day, but remember just because it is on sale, doesn’t mean you have to buy it.
- The 12 Days of Christmas Debt is something to think about on Boxing Day? Maybe think about that at Thanksgiving?
- Weirdest Boxing Day Ever? What do you expect during a Pandemic, I suppose?
- Happy Boxing Day 2023! Will we return to the mayhem we are used to?
Christmas seems to be getting like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and a few other days — a time for shopaholics to spend without the usual feeling of immediate guilt.