SoFi Blog

Maintaining a budget is hard at any time of year, but when the winter holiday season is on the horizon, and the time has come for gifts to be purchased, decorations to be pulled out and updated, and parties to be thrown and attended, budgeting can easily and quickly fall by the wayside.

While it’s no big deal to swap a restaurant meal for a home-cooked dinner during the year, it can feel like your best laid plans go to waste once Thanksgiving hits. Between holiday celebrations, extra treats for coworkers, travel plans, and more, it’s easy to see how, for Americans, the average Christmas debt is around $1,054.

The scariest part? While more than half of the respondents to a MagnifyMoney survey said they would pay down the debt in three months or less, around 30% said they would need five months or more to pay off the holiday debt on their credit card.

In order to avoid being part of that statistic—and avoid interest rates that could haunt you well into 2019—here are some budgeting tips as well as tips for how to manage credit card debt.

As the end of the year approaches, many of us find ourselves staring at our annual “to-do” list and wondering how none of it got done. Resolutions and to-dos have a funny way of building up at year-end like that, don’t they?

Luckily, there’s hope for us procrastinators. There is still plenty of time left in the year to take some action and feel accomplished by the ringing in of the new year. Cue the victory champagne (or hot chocolate, if that’s more your thing).

Below, we’ll cover some ideas for DIY projects for home that you can work on before the year comes to a close. Hopefully, this will help get the juices flowing on end-of-year projects so that you can finish the year on a high.

After the turkey’s been devoured, the wine consumed, and everyone is pleasantly stuffed (okay, overstuffed), millions of us head to the couch or the car to kick-start our holiday shopping. (You guessed it—this post is all about the Black Friday and Cyber Monday discounts!)

Black Friday and Cyber Monday used to be two distinctly separate shopping holidays, but as online shopping becomes more and more prevalent, the two dates are merging into a weekend-long sale extravaganza.

In an attempt to stand out from all the noise on the actual day, some retailers will often start their Black Friday deals earlier in the week—and even extend their deals into December.

And by taking advantage of the steep discounts following Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you can maximize your budget and get the gifts you’ve been eyeing.
While it can seem like almost everything is on sale from Thanksgiving all the way through the day after Christmas, there are certain buys that may be better deals than others.

Thanksgiving is supposed to be about celebrating your bounty, not spending it. Still, it can be tough to get through the holiday meal and festivities without gobbling up your bank account.

If you’re already working on a budget for the winter holidays—between Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and New Year’s—why not back things up a bit and include Thanksgiving in your plan? That way you won’t be in the red before you even get to Black Friday.

Whether you’re the host or a guest, being creative and proactive can be key. Here are some tips on how to save money. (No thanks necessary.)

Maybe you love sports. If so, transforming your basement into a rec room where you can, say, shoot pool and watch football games on a big screen with your best friends may feel like a dream come true. Or, maybe you just need an extra bedroom and/or more bathrooms for your growing family. Either way, read on.

No matter what extra room you want in your home, basement remodeling makes good sense because you can handle the renovations without needing to add an addition onto your house. “Sure,” you might think, “but you haven’t seen MY basement. The floors and walls are concrete, and we store all of our extra stuff down there.”

Well, that sounds just like a normal basement, pre-remodel. And in this post, we’ll share steps to help you turn that cold concrete into a livable (and even lovable!) living space, as well as providing information about a typical basement remodel cost. We’ll start out by sharing inspirational remodeling ideas, so you can solidify what you want your finished basement to look like, and then we’ll do some reverse engineering for you, including an excellent way to finance your remodeling project.