Staying on top of your personal spending shouldn't be as complicated as you think. Lazetta Braxton, a certified financial planner, joined Cheddar News to provide tips on how to track that spending, such as grouping expenses into different categories.

<div class="block">Staying on top of your personal spending shouldn&#39;t be as complicated as you think. Lazetta Braxton, a certified financial planner, joined Cheddar News to provide tips on how to track that spending, such as grouping expenses into different categories.</div>

beWell

Be Well: Tips to Track Your Personal Spending

It happens to all of us during the holidays, we tend to overspend and put ourselves in a bit of a financial bind. Well, planning a holiday spending budget can be stressful, but there are simple things that you can do to enjoy the holiday season without going broke. So certified financial planner, Lisetta Braxton is here to help us with some tips. Thank you so much for being here because I hope my wife is listening right now because this happened every year because of her. So first of all, how do we not get ourselves in a financial bind during the holidays? First figure out how much debt you're already in before you decide to add on to it? Well, that's the first step is to know and then the second step is to make that decision. Do you wanna add on to more debt? And if you do, let's make this last season that you do that. And how do you get away from that guilt that you feel if you don't buy everyone a gift in your family, have a conversation, is that your current culture now to buy everyone a gift, try you know, some ideas where you're picking names and you getting one gift. So everybody gets something. Ok. I know Black Friday is a popular thing to catch some deals. What else do you suggest? Honestly, I suggest you start early. So we're having this conversation about this holiday season. Let's get through it and start setting some money aside now for next year. Oh, that's really planning ahead a year in advance. Yes, I mean, you should have the money before you spend it. Right. Yeah, technically. Ok. So save in advance and then take advantage of some of those sales that may be available. Yes, the sales are extremely important. The deals are still there. So get your early bird or the night before and have a list. Don't go without a list because you're overs spent, you know, like going to the grocery store, you wanna pick up a couple of things and you end up picking up like several things that were not on the list, stick to the list and I know another good tip you have is redirect your goals. What do you mean by that? Really? Think about if you want to continue to, you know, spin for everyone, ask yourself, you know, what's really important? Is it the time that you're sharing together the gifts that you're given a combination of the two? The key is, think about it. Just don't keep doing what you've done before. Ok. Unfortunately, some people have already spent what do you say to those people that they should do next after they've already over spent for the holidays when you're thinking about overspending, you wanna check to see how much of your credit limit you have spent because the credit utilization that is how much credit you have available versus how much you've spent. And if you're close to that number, that's 30% of your credit score, that's, that's a high percentage as you think about other things in life you wanna do. All right, great tips. Thank you so much for your time and for your insight.