As the days grow shorter and the nights get colder, our thoughts might start turning towards festive matters. Christmas is coming, and while this should be a cause for excitement and anticipation of good family times, for many of us there’s something less pleasurable on our minds at this time of year. The holiday season gets evermore expensive, and if money is already tight we might worry about how our finances will cope.
It’s very common for people to use a credit card to cover the expenses of gifts, food, drinks and socialising, intending to pay off their indulgences in the New Year, but this kind of credit is fairly expensive – especially if your good intentions to repay early don’t quite succeed and you end up carrying the debt for many months.
Another option is to make use of an overdraft facility at the bank, going ‘into the red’ over the holiday season. This is a convenient option, but it comes at a price – an overdraft is often expensive to maintain, with both a monthly fee and a percentage interest charge. This can make an overdraft almost expensive as a credit card.
There’s also the danger that if...