The holidays don’t have to mean financial chaos.
In this episode of Money Files, I’m breaking down The Holiday Money Myth, the belief that you have to choose between joy and financial peace. Every year, we get caught in the same cycle: overspending in November and December, then starting January in regret and survival mode. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
I’ll walk you through how to redefine what generosity, connection, and celebration look like, without defaulting to debt or fake math. You’ll learn how to set a realistic holiday spending number, plan for emotional triggers, and create meaningful experiences that don’t cost your financial peace.
You’ll also hear practical steps to help you manage your holiday spending in alignment with your goals, from setting clear boundaries to maintaining your weekly money dates through the season.
Listen in to learn:
[01:10] Why the Holiday Money Myth keeps you stuck in overspending cycles
[03:25] How fear and guilt drive holiday spending habits
[05:15] How to define what joy and connection truly mean for you
[07:30] Setting your total holiday spending number based on real math
[09:50] How to give meaningful gifts without going into debt
[12:20] Managing emotional spending triggers during the holidays
[14:40] Why maintaining weekly money dates keeps you grounded
[15:55] How to enjoy the season without sacrificing your goals
Tune into this episode of Money Files to learn how to enjoy the holidays without falling into the trap of overspending. It’s time to rewrite your holiday story, with intention, generosity, and financial peace.
Are you ready to start asking for help with your finances? Apply to work with me, and let’s start working towards your financial goals.
If you loved hearing about The Holiday Money Myth, check out Episode 148 Mastering Holiday Spending: How to Plan Ahead and Enjoy a Debt-Free Holiday. Together, these episodes will help you stay grounded, intentional, and fully present this holiday season without the financial regret in January.
Transcript for “How to Enjoy the Holidays Without Overspending or Debt”
Intro: Hi, and welcome to Money Files. I’m Keina Newell from Wealth Over Now. I work everyday with professional women and solopreneurs to help them get out of financial overwhelm and shame so they can experience more flexibility and ease with their finances. Are you ready to gain confidence and learn to manage your finances intentionally? Tune in and grab financial tips that will help you master the way you think about and manage your finances.
Keina: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Money Files. So let me ask you something, when did we all collectively decide that the holidays mean financial chaos? At what point did we start accepting that November and December are just going to be expensive, stressful, and overwhelming, and that our only job is to survive and deal with the damage in January? And I know you may not literally be saying that, but it shows up with our bank accounts, it shows up in our credit cards, and we just allow this time of year to just spin us out of control. And we put ourselves in places and spaces where we just spend on autopilot. And I’ve been thinking about this a lot because I think we’ve bought into a myth, the myth that says that you can’t enjoy the holidays and stay on track financially. The myth that says it’s either deprivation or debt, so you got to pick one and the myth that says everybody overspends during the holidays so it’s basically inevitable.
But what if none of that’s actually true? What if the reason the holidays wreck our finances isn’t because they have to, it’s because we’re following a script that was never designed to work for us in the first place? So today I’m breaking down the holiday money myth and I’m going to show you how to navigate the next six weeks without sacrificing joy, connection, or your financial progress because you deserve to enjoy the holidays and you also deserve to walk into January feeling calm and in control. And I don’t want you to have to choose. So let’s start with where the myth comes from because it didn’t just appear out of nowhere.
We’ve been conditioned to believe that the holidays require us to spend money we don’t have. Think about the messages that start flooding in, around October, ‘the biggest shopping season of the year, black Friday deals you can’t miss.’ Give them something they’ll never forget. Make this holiday magical. And underneath all of that is an implied threat. If you don’t spend, you’ll disappoint someone. If you don’t participate, you’ll miss out. And if you don’t buy the gifts or host the parties, you’re failing at the holidays. So we inadvertently spend, and I’m not even touching on how families also make us buy into this or how friends and relationships make us buy into this, but we buy things we can’t afford to prove we care. We say yes to traditions we don’t even enjoy because we feel obligated. We swipe the card and we tell ourselves, we’ll figure it out later. And that’s where fake math creeps in, convincing you that future you will cover the bill, and that’s it, not that bad.
January will be your reset and then January comes and we’re tired, we’re stressed, and you are in regret. And here’s the thing, that cycle doesn’t happen because the holidays are inherently expensive. It happens because we’re operating from fear instead of intention. Fear that we’re not doing enough. Fear that people will be disappointed, fear that we won’t keep up and we’ll be judged. And that fear drives us to spend in ways that don’t even align with what we value. So let’s be honest about what the holidays actually require. Do they require some spending? Sure. Do they require some thoughtfulness? Absolutely. Do they require presence and intention? A hundred percent. But do they require debt? No. Do they require draining your savings? No. Do they require sacrificing your financial peace? Absolutely not.
The holidays don’t require financial chaos. We create it when we try to meet everyone else’s expectations instead of defining our own. So just pause and ask yourself, what do I actually want the holidays to feel like? What actually creates connection and joy for me? What am I doing out of obligation versus genuine desire? Like literally pause me and answer those three questions because you probably haven’t taken the time to even think about those things because the holidays, once you press play, you are in it, for six to eight weeks without even really thinking about it. So if you can take this time to journal on those questions and start to actually answer them, you’ll see how you’ve just succumbed to some of the things that are cultural, the things that your family said was important. And if you can actually answer those three questions for yourself, you can stop doing fake math and you can start using real math and spending in line with your values and your actual numbers.
I’m not saying that this is like the easiest shift, especially if you have familial traditions and you feel like I can’t say no, but it is something that you can practice and the more you practice, the stronger you get at it. So asking yourself, what do I actually want the holidays to feel like? What actually creates connection and joy for me? What am I doing out of obligation versus genuine desire? You can even ask the people, like ask these questions to other people in your life that you spend the holidays with because sometimes we all need a pause button, so that we can enjoy the season without wrecking our finances. Because generally speaking, everybody’s in the same boat, you just don’t know it and they’re not talking about it. So I want you to be able to be generous without going into debt, and I want you to be able to show love without spending money you don’t have.
So let’s go ahead and dive in and let’s talk about what this actually looks like in real life.
So the first thing I want you to do, is I want you to decide on your total holiday number. Hopefully I haven’t caught you too late and you can still do this. I don’t think it’s ever too late. Even if you’ve already spent money. Decide on your total holiday number, not what you spent last year, not what you should spend, but what can you actually afford this year based on your real math, not your emotions, put your emotions to the side. If you are working on saving or paying off $10,000, this number matters because every holiday dollar is a dollar not going toward that goal. So maybe it’s $500, it’s $1000 or $2,000. I just want you to own that number and I want you to protect it, like that’s your real math holiday number.
Then I want you to do step two, which is break down where that money’s going. I want you to divide it up. I want you to think about gifts, I want you to think about travel. I want you to think about hosting, think about decor, think about giving, and then run it through the three money bucket system. What is bills? What’s spending, what’s savings? I want your accounts to be able to support. Maybe when you’re running this through the system and you’re like, okay, well the hosting is going to come out of my spending money that I already have because I have to buy groceries anyways, but I have some holiday money that’s over in savings so I’m going to pull that over for my savings.
So if the math doesn’t fit, then I need you to pause. I need you to just go back and see where do I need to be more clear. It means that you’re going to have to choose to see like what actually matters to me? How do I want to feel going out of the season? Then I want you to get specific about your gifts in step number three. So make your list and I want you to decide dollar amounts, or you can even decide like specific things, like if you know the people in your life and you know exactly what you’re getting them and then think about the dollar amount and have honest conversations. Like if you guys are doing secret Santa, what are the limits? What are the expectations? Ask questions. Don’t let people be in your pockets just because you feel like you have to do something.
No, get in front of this by actually writing down the people like coworkers, nieces and nephews, friends, like write it all down. And get specific about how much of your real math holiday number is going to be spent on gifts. Then I need you to also create yourself a list where you can find the free and low cost joy. And this doesn’t mean that it’s watered down, but sometimes we want to buy someone something, but also spending time with them would be enough of a connection. So sometimes your best holiday moments are rarely going to cost money. Like maybe you’re going to go look at lights together, maybe you’re going to cook together, watch movies or volunteer, but you can do something that is simple, intentional, and fun, and schedule those out. Put that in your calendar.
If you have kids, you could also just think about how do I want to change the narrative around how we’re going to spend the holidays? Because whatever you teach them is like what they’ll carry into adulthood, and this is a great opportunity for you to shift that narrative, for you to teach them what you want them to take away from this season. And if you want them to be people who are generous and to be in a space of gratitude and thankfulness, it might not mean that you’re spending a lot of money. It may mean that we’re spending more time together because our family values spending time together or we want to have experiences over things, like these are intentional things that you can do.
Step five is to plan for the emotional triggers. So the holidays are emotional and emotions make us spend money. So this week, as you just have some time before you maybe just, get thrown in with your family, I want you to think about what are some of my triggers? Maybe I have a cousin that has more money than me and I feel like I try to show him up, so comparison comes into play. Maybe some guilt comes into play, somebody gives me something and I feel like I have to give them something. Overwhelm might come into play, but I want you to build a plan. Maybe you give yourself a 24 hour rule, or maybe you have an accountability text or maybe you delete the apps or maybe you tell yourself, I show love through presence, not presents. So presence with a S, versus presence with a T and just reminding yourself, it’s like you would tell a little kid, you are enough and being able to remind yourself of that. Because at the end of this, we want to think about how do you want to feel coming out of the holidays?
And yes, you could have shown up in ways that in the moment made you look really good, but you got to deal with the version of you that is going to meet you at your mailbox in January when your credit card statement comes in, when your bank statement comes. And then step number six is, make sure that you maintain your weekly money dates. So every week, have a little mini money date, that’s 15 minutes so you can look at the numbers, you can decide, okay, what’s coming up this week and you can adjust. You want to make sure that you maintain your money dates during the season so that you are aware and that you are mindful of what’s being spent.
So being able to ask yourself, what has gone well with my spending? Alright, what didn’t work so well for my spending? I didn’t really think about, the cookie party that I had to go to, the five boxes of butter I was going to buy and what do I want to do differently? How do I want to feel? That’s a part of you creating more choice with your money instead of you having regret. So at the heart of the holiday money myth, is confusion. I think about generosity and we’ve equated generosity with spending, but generosity isn’t about how much you spend, it’s about how much of yourself you can give. You can be generous with your time, your attention and your presence. A handwritten note, you might make somebody a playlist or put together one of those cute photo albums for them, but like, these are decisions that matter because it’s going to keep you in alignment with your goals.
It’s going to keep you in alignment with you what you said was important. And so if you are shifting how you think about money, that doesn’t mean that you have to feel like you’re being restricted, but it can change how you communicate, how you’re showing up. And it means that you’re going to be more intentional. And it means that also, like putting in the work right now is going to also allow you to have less regret when you come out of this season or to feel really good about the things that you did gift people or how you did spend your time. Because you’re going to know, I put in the work, Keina gave me some inspiration and I put in the work to think through that. So if you are in a place where you’ve already done some holiday spending and you think it’s too late because you’ve already overspent, I just want you to take a breath and you haven’t messed up anything, there are still many, many more weeks of spending and it still matters.
So do a quick money date, reset. Think about, where am I right now? Do I actually want to keep the things that I’ve spent money on? That’s always a great question. What’s left and how can I adjust? You might not hit every single goal, but you can stop yourself from spiraling and just feeling like what’s done is done. You can allow yourself an opportunity to get back on track. And if you need help, that’s what coaching is for. It’s so you don’t have to untangle it alone. And so just imagine in January that you come out of November and December with no panic, no shame, you are not spiraling. You can open your accounts, you can check your credit card statement and feel calm and you’re proud of how you’ve handled this season. Like that’s what my clients are going to go through this November, this December.
We are going to maintain real math. We’re going to use our Money Bucket System, the Three Money Bucket System and we’re going to commit to money dates and we’re going to enter into the New Year with momentum and be really aware of what’s happening, of all of our choices. They’re going to have enjoyed the holidays, while also staying in alignment, creating connections. And they’re going to break some of this holiday myth that this just has to be a chaotic time of the year. So if you’re thinking, I want this, I need support, I want you to apply to work with me. Right now I’m doing a push for people to join what I’m calling the Five Figure Reinvention and it’s my five month coaching partnership. And we are going to build a personalized plan for you to either save $10,000 or either pay off $10,000 or a combination of both before the end of the year.
We’re going to attach that to my simple Three Money Bucket System and we’re going to start right now, in the middle of the holiday season. Because if you can manage money in December, if you can manage money in November, you can manage it at any time. So apply to work with me. Don’t put yourself in a space where you think I need to wait. You don’t need to wait. You are perfect how you are right now, and we can figure out your next steps together. You don’t have to be overwhelmed that we get to do this together. So go to Wealthovernow.com and you can go right up at the top. It says, book a call or go to my show notes. And until next week, have a great week and Happy Thanksgiving.
Outro: Thank you so much for listening to Money Files. If you’re ready to take the next step to reach your financial goals, head to www.wealthovernow.com/appointment and let’s get started.
