Credit gorgers face ugly reality — time to pay up

A  good “shock survey result” can be a great read. The good ones can rattle your cage, shake your little world.

Get you focussed on something important in your life.

That is, if you don’t deliberately divorce yourself from the findings by deflection. “They’re talking about other people, not me.”

Or other species. Such as rats.

“Junk food linked to memory loss in NSW study on rats,” read the headline. After just six days, rats fed a diet high in sugar and fat suffered brain fade.

Noooo! Really? Consistently shoving crap in your gob might cause your noggin to become a little retarded?

“Honey, our kids and rats … there’s some similarities. Hey, maybe we oughtta tell our rugrats that McDonald’s is a sometimes food. Whaddya think?”

Seriously? Didn’t we clear that up in 2004 with Morgan Spurlocks’s “Super Size Me” documentary?

I have a sad interest in finance surveys.

Sad, because they’re usually so serious. Money, not love, makes the world go around. Ask Liza Minnelli.

This one goes in the shock survey results. There’s a one in four chance it’s talking about you.

At the end of this month, about a quarter of Australian households will be suffering financial stress.

But, in the fast-food-causes-dementia category of “derr!” goes the reason why. Those who overspend at Christmas start to feel the full force of the financial poop hitting a high-velocity splatter fan in March.

Credit cards fell due. Now they’re behind.

So, for about 25 per cent of Australian households, your world is about to get somewhere between a little bit, and a whole lot, ugly.

And just so we’ve got enough rope to hang ourselves, we’ve been applying for more credit.

Sure. Bigger credit limits. Person is in a hole. Hand them a shovel. Let them keep digging. More credit always fixes things, right?

As always, it’s credit cards that prove to be the killer. We gorge in the belief that we can kick that can down the road a few months.

Clearly we have a problem. But why?

What is it about Christmas that comes as a surprise to y’all? Conveniently, and unlike Easter, they hold it on the same day each year. The decorations go up earlier and earlier, giving us more warning. The jolly fat bugger ho-ho-ho’s his way around the malls like a big warning bell throughout December.

I know it’s March, you’ve been back at work for a while and the kids are back at school. Last Christmas is a distant memory.

Peeps, collectively, we’ve got to get our acts together. Sure, if you’ve already blown the dough, it’s going to be a little hard to get through the next few months, without extreme abuse of store gift returns policies.

But you need to promise yourself that you won’t go through this pain again.

Next Christmas, give yourself a late present from Santa by not stressing the family household out for six months after the event.

Start putting away for next Christmas now. Hide it in your offset or redraw account (or a high-interest savings account). Heck, if there are still Christmas club accounts in existence, open one. Put $20 a week in. $50. $100. A little bit each week won’t hurt nearly as much as the pain some of you are going to feel for the next few months.

Make it automatic, with a pre-organised bank transfer. Simplify it.

Come to understand money’s number one rule, which is the principle of delayed gratification. That means that if you don’t spend money now, you’ll have more of it to spend later, thanks to compounding interest.

Equally, become familiar with the difference between “need” and “want”. Your kids aren’t playing with one-third of the crud you bought them.

But in the meantime, buckle up and put your helmet on. The next few months, on a personal level, will be tough.

Bruce Brammall is the author of Debt Man Walking, a licensed financial adviser and mortgage broker. bruce@brucebrammallfinancial.com.au.