I’m going to go ahead and take a wild guess that you may have gone off the deep end over Thanksgiving. Let’s be real, Thanksgiving food is the best food and it’s so hard to resist, even when you feel like you can’t eat another bite. And, if you’re like me, then you went off the deep end multiple times at multiple Thanksgiving dinners. When things like this happen, we sometimes just feel like giving up on our diets completely. We feel like we’ve already blown it so we might as well just keep eating like crap, right? But that only makes the situation worse. What we actually need to do is realize that eating more than we should have over Thanksgiving is just a short-term mistake that likely doesn’t have a significant impact when we view our diets in the long term.
We don’t want to make it a habit to continue to do this and justify it as just a one-time thing that won’t have much of an impact over the long-term, because then it will become a habit and it will have an affect on reaching our goals. What we should is do not dwell on it and get back on track.
Another Holiday Mistake
Maybe you not only blew your diet out of the water over Thanksgiving, but you also blew through your budget. You didn’t plan on buying all of that stuff but then Black Friday deals and new and shiny and…Yeah, I get it. Unlike with what you ate, you can return the things that you bought and get your money back if you really don’t need or want them (hopefully, you don’t see that as an option for the food you ate, too).
However, if you could afford those things without affecting your progress towards your goals, and they’ll provide long-term value to you, then you can just keep them. There’s no need to worry or feel guilty about spending money that doesn’t negatively affect you reaching your goals because you’ve obviously budgeted to spend that money at some point.
Get back on track, follow your budget, and keep making progress towards your goals.
What you don’t want to do is to develop the “screw it” attitude and tell yourself that it’s okay to continue to buy things that you don’t really need or want because you’ve already screwed up. Well, I’ll just buy this one more thing that I really want. Oh, well, I really like that thing too and I already messed up my budget, so I might as well go ahead and buy it. The rabbit hole can be a tricky place to get out of.
Here are 3 tips to get back on track after overspending during the holidays:
Reevaluate Your Budget
Take some time to sit down and review your budget. Make any changes necessary to reflect your projected spending in December and create a plan for how you want your money to work for you. You could plan to spend less in the upcoming months to make up for your overspending this month, but how likely are you to stick to this once the time comes?
If you overspent significantly, then you may want to consider budgeting for these expenses beginning in January for next year. For example, if you think that you’ll end up spending $1,000 on Black Friday in 2019, then budget to save $91 per month from January through November.
Keep Your Eyes on the Prize
You’re going to see a ton of advertisements and “deals” in December. Don’t be tempted to go off budget and spend money on something that you haven’t budgeted for and don’t really need or want. If you needed it or wanted it that badly, then you would have included that within your December spending projections or, if it’s a big ticket item, you would have started saving for it a while ago.
The prize isn’t that new gadget that you see an ad for on TV and feel compelled to buy, the prize is knowing that you’re one step closer to reaching your goals and to financial freedom
Track Your Progress
Make a point to sit down each week and record your spending. Take note of how much you’ve spent in comparison to your projections and if you need to adjust to compensate for overspending or if you have some wiggle room to buy something that you haven’t planned on. Or, you could save any extra money and get a head start on your 2019 savings goals.
Proactively tracking your progress not only keeps you aware of where your money is going each week, but it can also serve as a weekly dose of motivation to make adjustments to make sure that you reach your goals.
Thanksgiving has come and gone – don’t worry too much about how many thousands of calories you ate that you maybe shouldn’t have or the money that you didn’t really plan to spend. Getting off track every once in a while doesn’t mean that you’ve ruined everything, but it also shouldn’t be used as an excuse to continue making the problem worse. Learn from the mistakes that you made, make them better if you can, and set a plan of action to help make sure that you don’t make those same mistakes again in the future.
