How to avoid over budgeting during the festivities

By Jumia Travel Tanzania

Usually, the festive season is a time when most people spend a lot of money for travelling, shopping, and buying gifts for their loved ones, family, and friends.

Jumia Travel (www.travel.jumia.com) would like to give you a piece of advice on how to plan your festivals effectively, in order to start the New Year with a smile rather than a panic.

Set aside your budget

There are various ways to plan your festive budget for expenditures such as for buying gifts, shopping or a charitable donation. It is advisable to have a prior plan or a list of items and their respective budget instead of waiting until the actual days of festivals.

Track your expenditures

To set aside a budget is not enough unless you establish a close tracking system of expenditures so as to be aware on how your money is spent. This also can be attained by having a separate bank account for a festive season apart from your current one. To facilitate easy tracking you are advised to install bank programs on your mobile phone or have an excel sheet that you will be able to get access to wherever and whenever you are.    

Cut-down unnecessary expenses

If you had a tendency of taking out your family every weekend, maybe for a swim or cinema you can stop at least on this month and instead use that money on other issues such as buying gifts, shopping or decorating the house during this festive season.

Introduce a ‘Secret Santa’

Unfortunately, most African families are not familiar with ‘Secret Santa.’ This technique could save you with some expenses if you will try to introduce it into your family. Let’s say there are a couple of family members and each of them buy a gift for his/her ‘Secret Santa’ such as parents, grandparents, sisters, brothers, cousins, in-laws, and neighbors. You will cut down costs by avoiding buying gifts to all members of the family and turn the moment to be very exciting and memorable.

Avoid costly traditions

There are still some of the tribes embrace a tradition that requires family members to gather every end of the year and throw a spectacular party. Therefore, people incur costs to travel with their families. To avoid this situation, you can do simple things to your family and they will be very delighted.

Be careful with sales offers

You have to be extra-careful with the sales offers during this festive season. Sales persons are very clever when it comes to push sales under the ‘Sales Discount’ taglines. Those tricks might entice you to purchase a lot of products unwillingly, so make sure you know what you are going to buy when you visit a shop.  

Try not to exceed your shopping

Festive season is the time when most customers find themselves at purchasing dilemmas, whereby there are thousands of sales offers targeting them in every shopping mall they enter. You are advised to have a list of items you want to buy as well as their respective budget and if possible do a shopping before the actual festive days if you know that you will not be able to control yourself from more buyings.

Lastly but not least, Jumia Travel (www.travel.jumia.com) would like to advise you to do an evaluation on the purchases you make during the entire festive season, so as to determine if you operated under the set budget or if you exceeded. This will help you to know if you will start a new year with a smile or some debts to clear.