Why Holiday Loans Are the Worst Idea Ever

Bad ideas are all over the place, and they’re not always as bad as they seem. Sometimes a bad idea makes for the best story. Sometimes a bad idea turns into a really good life lesson. After all, we appreciate a good mistake. For one, it means you’re trying (unless, of course, it means that you are simply not doing things you know you need to do because you just don’t care). Secondly, a good mistake makes a very valuable lesson. We don’t always see the lesson right away. We don’t even always appreciate our mistakes right away. However, we can almost always look back on our lives and the mistakes we’ve made, the bad ideas we’ve had and we can see the lessons that they taught us. Those lessons typically make us stronger, smarter and wiser; they make us better.

Of course, we don’t want to make mistakes. We make them, we learn from them and we move on. However, some mistakes are simply not worth making; and some ideas are really just that bad. Today, we heard a really, really bad idea that made us experience a myriad of emotions. The first was disbelief. I actually did not just read what I just read. Did I just read what I thought I just read? No. But yes, yes I did just read that. It’s a joke, right? Yes, it’s obviously a joke. Yes, definitely a joke.

No, no; it’s not a joke. Okay, so this is serious. I cannot believe this is a real thing and people actually do this and banks are actually encouraging this. Did they learn nothing? Oh, right, you’re probably standing here wondering what I’m blabbering on and on about; holiday loans. Yes, you heard me correctly. Holiday loans are serious. They are loans for people who want to shop for the holidays but don’t have the cash to do it.

The idea might seem appealing to some. After all, it is difficult to shop for Christmas if you don’t have the cash. However, we just aren’t a fan of this idea. In fact, it sounds like, quite possibly, one of the worst ideas we’ve heard all year. For one, we still have three months plus before Christmas arrives. Secondly, it’s not as if Christmas was a big surprise to anyone. Oh no, Christmas? I was not expecting this! In fact, Christmas comes around on the same day (December 25) every single year. You have ample time to plan for this.

The last thing you need to do is take out a loan. You don’t want to go into debt over Christmas gifts. This is why we are advising you not to get a holiday loan, max out your credit cards or otherwise even bother with this mess of an idea. It’s not a good one, and we are not fans. Instead, we have a few other suggestions for making Christmas a good one this year.

Join the Christmas Club

Some employers do this thing where they will take a predesignated portion of your check every time you are paid and put it aside. They will then disburse this amount to you before the holidays so that you have time to shop and enjoy buying gifts. If you didn’t do this last year for this Christmas, ask about it now. It might not help much for this Christmas, but it might help a bit.

Save the Easy Way

If you have enough disposable income that you and your spouse can each spend money on lunch or coffee each day, you need to get some willpower and stop. Pack a lunch, do something else; whatever. Take the $10 you spend each day and put it in a savings account every single day the moment you wake up so that you don’t spend it. Do you how much money you can put away by Christmas if you do this now? If you do it all month in October and November (61 days), you’ll put away $610. That’s decent.

Clean Up

People do this all the time, and it’s an impressive way to make money. Have a yard sale or go through your closet and start selling stuff online. It’s not nearly as difficult as you might imagine, but it has the potential to earn you quite a bit of additional money. Even if you only make a few hundred dollars between now and Christmas, it’s still a few hundred more dollars than you had to spend.

Get a Second Job

You don’t have to get a second job at the mall or whatever; you can get one online and work when you have free time. You can be a personal assistant, a virtual assistant, a medical transcriptionist, a freelance writer, editor, proofreader or anything that you have the skill and know-how to do. It’s not all that difficult, but it might pay you enough to finance Christmas without stressing yourself out a million times over.

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