How to Spend Your Bonus

Posted by: Sophie H. | Dec 22,2007


Here’s a post from MSNBC which to me reads like a kind of fantasy: How to Spend Your Holiday Bonus.  It mentions things like eliminate debt, put money into your Roth IRA, save it an emergency fund, and other good, staple ideas.  The real truth for me is that I used the bulk of my Christmas bonus to pay for Christmas presents.  Basically, what it came down to was that my Christmas bonus allowed me to break even with gift-buying.  That’s a good solution, really, though not the most glamorous, and it ensured that I’d never have to buy gifts on credit.  

As I got older, however, I became a much better saver.  It’s easy to point the finger and tell people that they should be saving more money, but honestly it might be a question of age.  As I got older, “things” didn’t matter to me as much: by that I mean, gadgets, expensive jewelry, and the like.  I became much less of a materialist and much more content with what I already owned.  As a result, it became much easier to save throughout the year.  It’s pretty difficult to force this point of view on another person.  For me, it came gradually.  

Because I was saving throughout the year, I was able to actually use my Christmas bonus for more than just Christmas shopping.  I wasn’t consciously saving for December, but the result was the same.  By the time the end of the year rolled around, I had a fair amount of savings, so that my Christmas bonus was, indeed, a bonus.  For me, I didn’t put it into something so terribly responsible, such as a 401(k) account, as I spend the entire year being methodically responsible.  Instead, I bought myself a Christmas gift, something I wouldn’t consider buying throughout the year.  

A lot of the time is spent on this blog about how you need to aggressively attack debt and save.  There’s a lot of finger-pointing about frivolous spending.  While I’m not going to advocate a year’s full of impulse buys, “All work and no play makes Sophie a dull elderly lady.”  So come Christmas time might be the perfect time to reward yourself for the year’s hard work.  If you can afford it, your Christmas bonus is a good time to splurge a little bit.  It's not a bad idea every once in a while.    

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