Deck the Bills: Smart Spending and Credit Tips for the Holidays
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How can you avoid overspending during the holidays?
Managing your credit score can feel a bit like playing a game where you weren't told the rules, and one small misstep can mean game over.
And recovering from a credit score mistake is a little more complicated than just putting a quarter into the slot and playing again. Sean, I know that you are deep in your video game era lately, now that you have all this newfound spare time. Do you have any credit cheat codes for us?
No cheat codes here, sadly. But this episode, we will help our listeners master the rules of the credit score game to get, shall we say, a new high score? Oh, Sean, your supply of credit related puns remains as robust as ever. Thank you. Welcome to NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast. I'm Sean Piles.
And I'm Sarah Rathner. This episode, we take on a number of your questions about credit in a lightning round. We'll talk about how to get rent payments counted toward your credit score, how to recover from a missed payment, and we'll clarify a bit of credit myth busting we did earlier this year.
But before we get into any of that, let's do a little holiday consumerism check-in. Sarah, how are you feeling about holiday shopping right now? Are you still getting that dopamine boost from clicking the buy button? Or does each new package on your doorstep leave you with a sense of dread?
Honestly, a new package arrives and I'm like, what now?
Or the latter.
Yeah, but I am enjoying the pair of AirPods that I got on sale because tangled headphone cords is the worst.
Yes. Welcome to the future, Sarah. AirPods are the best.
Now I can walk down the street looking like that jerk with the AirPods.
Although you know what? The Gen Z folks are saying that corded headphones are back. So you might want to keep those around.
Well, I still have my skinny jeans and my low rise socks.
So there you go.
Sorry, Gen Z. I'm just going to be a millennial. It's fine.
You do you. On my end, I have taken up this unhealthy habit of watching QVC when I'm bored, like partially as like a cultural and anthropological exercise. And I got to tell you, Sarah, it is not good for my mental health. You're kidding. It's a slippery slope from laughing at one piece of junk after another being marketed as some life-saving gadget to quickly falling into a pit of existential dread about what the creation and consumption of this junk is doing to the planet. All that said, I don't like to spiral too much or succumb to doomerism. You know, actionable, forward-looking advice is where I feel most comfortable.
That's good to hear because, honestly, you were getting pretty bleak there for a moment.
Yeah, sorry about that. But, you know, I was recently reading this article in the New York Times with the headline, I haul, therefore I am, about shopping hauls and what they say about us as consumers, and I did spiral a little bit. The article talks about this new shop from Amazon called Amazon Haul, which seems designed to get you to buy cheap stuff that you do not need to build up a haul that I guess you are then supposed to make a social media post about. Like, Sarah, you know all those haul videos where people post about the mounds of junk that they buy?
Yeah, I hate them. Go on.
The article goes on to discuss how fast fashion and shopping haul culture drive this self-perpetuating dopamine-fueled cycle of consumerism, which of course costs people a lot of money. And in fact, NerdWallet recently released a report about the impact of impulse shopping on people's budgets and found that more than one in five Americans have made impulse purchases that significantly impacted their finances in the past 12 months.
Not only is this form of consumption bad for the planet, but it's hurting people's finances too. And it's just for this fleeting moment of excitement to post on social media and then have it disappear into people's algorithms almost immediately.
Yeah, I'm pretty clearly at the point of the holidays where I can get a little bit grossed out by the mass consumption event that we're all taking part in.
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