You haven’t lived until you’ve had your visa card cut up. Not by you. In front of you. And in front of the thousands waiting behind you in line. By the lovely young Shopper’s Drug Mart (Broadway) cashier who barely has her driver’s license.  It was 1990 when it happened to me.

Oh, the January Bill Blues. Yes, I know them well.

In December, it’s all love and gifts and joy and cha-ching here and credit card there, and next thing you know you’re in over your head. It may sink in slowly, as the “Minimum Payment” and “Due by” envelopes come (or, now, the more discreet and easy-to-ignore e-bills quietly fill up the inbox), and it dawns on you that you actually need to pay them off, all of them, in the next few weeks. Or it may come crashing down, “Oh, $*#&! What the?!? I KNOW I didn’t spend that much at Jacob”. Then you remember the to-die-for dress. The little gloves. And actually, those were just the items you spent on you, in the bliss of the season. Jacob’s a wretchedly seductive store.

So now it’s January and you’re broke. No more lattes for you. In fact, no more movies for awhile either. Definitely, really definitely, no way can you go to Whistler. If you’re lucky, a few miserable, deprived weeks will do the trick and get your monthly cash flow back on track. If you’re me, you’ll get your visa cut up. In front of you. And the thousands … wait, I’ve covered that.

The point is, it’s particularly easy to mess up financially at certain times of the year. Christmas, vacations, birthdays – they all demand more self-discipline (an antiquated notion that sometimes we should control our impulses) than many of us can muster on the spot. So far I’ve come up with three solutions that work well for me.

1. After Christmas, I tally up the receipts for gifts, wine, new clothes (yes, I kept the receipts) to get a reasonable estimate of what the seasons costs me.

2. I’ve opened a bank account (I’m a fan of Citizens bank of Canada or ING) – no service fees, best interest rate) dedicated to special-occasion spending. Money can be automatically diverted into the account each paycheque, et voila! A small cache as needed.

3. I now visit Shopper’s on Fourth. And I choose the checkout with no one else around.

That was many years ago now. But those January Bills Blues. I remember them well.