The mistake you should avoid with your Christmas shopping so that your debts do not skyrocket

Christmas is usually quite demanding on our personal finances. Meals, leisure and gifts usually account for a large part of our expenses and, even if we try to stop our purchases, The expense is always greater than initially planned.

This Christmas, Spanish consumers They will spend on average up to 796 euros per person, 16.5% more than in last year’s holidays, when the average outlay stood at 683 euros. The data is collected in a survey published by the Organization of Consumers and Users (OCU) to some 2,000 people between 18 and 74 years old, which allows them to know the expenses associated with the celebration of Christmas and the activities that they will prioritize, although it also reveals probable excesses in disbursements and a certain level of stress

All of this occurs in a context in which inflation exceeds the famous 2% recommended by the European Union, since November closed with a 3% rise in pricesaccording to the National Institute of Statistics (INE). In this way, being aware that we will inevitably spend more, there is a maxim that we must keep in mind when making our purchases: be very careful with financing and deferring payments for our Christmas gifts.

In a shopping environment on-lineoffers of ‘buy now and pay later’ and fractional payment for almost any product, Elisabet Ruiz Dotrasprofessor of Economics and Business Studies at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) and expert in personal and digital finance, considers that “credit is not inherently badbut it can be a problem if it is used without a plan and involves interest.

“Payments in installments can be a good option as long as their cost is minimal and we have a clear plan to repay them. The problem is asking for credit upon credit because we no longer make it to the end of the month.“, he warns. Ruiz Dotras proposes a very simple rule: “If someone is capable of paying for a purchase on credit, I also could have saved that money earlier and do it later without credit, paying cheaper because you save interest.

For this expert, credit would only be justified in cases of real emergency, such as breakdowns or unforeseen events; or for the purchase of something very expensive, such as a home if you do not have the money. “What I would like is for people to be aware that they should save first, and not spend first. Today, most people spend and, if there is anything left over, they save. We are becoming a spending-oriented society, while our parents were thrifty people. The new generations run the risk of being indebted generations and of becoming more and more like North American society,” he warns.

“In the US you can finance a one-dollar hamburger”

The UOC professor relates this tendency to spend rather than save with the immediacysocial networks and the ease of financing: “Today you can finance almost any purchase. In the United States you can even finance a one-dollar hamburger. If someone needs to finance that, they not only have an economic problem: they have an excessive consumption problem“.

To control our expenses and avoid resorting to external financing in our usual purchases, Ruiz Dotras recommends following the well-known 50-30-20 rule, which consists of dedicate 50% of our income to basic expenses; 30% for leisure and personal expenses; and allocate 20% to savings. In practice, this expert admits that basic expenses often exceed 50% and are close to 60%. “In that case, perhaps leisure and personal activities cannot reach 30% and will have to be adjusted to 25% to be able to reserve at least 15% for savings,” he says.

“Planning, budgeting and awareness of spending are the best vaccine so that gifts, dinners and Christmas lights do not become months of financial worry,” he concludes.

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