{"id":604383,"date":"2025-12-01T01:40:47","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T01:40:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/604383\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T01:40:47","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T01:40:47","slug":"how-to-financially-prepare-for-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/604383\/","title":{"rendered":"How to financially prepare for 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Real Money, a free weekly newsletter giving expert tips on how to save, invest and make the most of your money, is sent every Sunday. You\u2019re reading an excerpt \u2212 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/newsletter-signup?newsletter=real-money&amp;utm_source=EditorialArticle&amp;utm_medium=ArticleText&amp;utm_campaign=newsletters\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sign up to get the whole newsletter in your inbox.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>You\u2019ve only got a few weeks to wrap up your final loose ends at work, start planning your Christmas\/New Year celebrations, and pick up whatever presents you need for your family, friends and other loved ones.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Put Christmas planning to one side and spend a little time thinking about your finances for 2026.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/6104b667e56c02db9c1489810c8723f668420ce37e66c4c58b8a9a647f5ccff5.jpeg\" height=\"390\" width=\"584\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Put Christmas planning to one side and spend a little time thinking about your finances for 2026.Credit: Michael Howard<\/p>\n<p>The good news about the latter is that it\u2019s currently Black Friday, so you should still be able to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/link\/follow-20170101-p5ni0x\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">snag a bargain<\/a> either in-store or online (and let\u2019s be honest, the sales basically last all of December these days so you\u2019ve got loads of time).<\/p>\n<p>But how about adding one more thing to your pre-Christmas list? Something that might take you a couple of hours, but will pay you dividends (possibly literally) over the long term? Something your future self approximately 12 months from now will be thanking you for?<\/p>\n<p>Loading<\/p>\n<p>Because not only is the end of the year a great time for Christmas shopping, it\u2019s also a great time to sit down and review your finances for the past 12 months, and plan for 2026.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s the problem?<\/p>\n<p>Around half of the country are considered financially illiterate, and a massive 86 per cent of us admit we <a href=\"https:\/\/www.moneymag.com.au\/86-australians-dont-know-expenses\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">don\u2019t know our monthly expenses<\/a>, let alone our expenses over the course of a whole year.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously, that\u2019s no good, and while I hope most Real Money readers are a little more attuned to their finances, sitting down at the end of the year to get a plan in place for next year can be extremely valuable in helping you get an accurate picture. It can also help you budget for Christmas presents!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Real Money, a free weekly newsletter giving expert tips on how to save, invest and make the most&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3093],"tags":[51,474,2499,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-604383","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-personal-finance","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115641767470050738","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}