5 things you can do to catch up if you overspent on the holidays.

It's easy to overspend. Here's how to reel things back in.

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Oh, January. How we love you and also hate you.

It's so good to have the hubbub from the holidays fading out and a slower pace setting in, but then the bills come. Whether you put holiday spending on credit or are just short on cash from the constant outpour that seems to happen, some strategies for pulling ahead financially could come in handy.

Here are five relatively easy things you could do to generate some cash and dig out faster.

1. Play with some dogs.

If you love dogs and you can have them at your place, why not take in some darling pooches on the weekends or other times when you'll be home? It's work, but it's not work-work (because snuggles!).

Two sites where you can plug and play to get connected to customers looking for dogsitters are Rover.com and Dogvacay.com (some sites include other pets as well!). You can set your own rate based on the market around you (for instance, $40 per night, if that's the going rate) and the companies take a small percentage in return for insuring you and the dog.

Why is the Netflix all upside down? Image by Carlos Pacheco/Flickr.

2. Consider letting people pay to stay at your place for short stints.

If you're going to be gone for a trip yourself you can spiff the place up and Airbnb it. Or if you have a guest room and can handle being a thoughtful host, you can rent it out while you're home.

Airbnb is a site that lets residents and travelers connect to arrange temporary stays (as an alternative to a pricier hotel, usually). It's not without its risks, but you can screen potential guests by checking reviews from previous hosts they've stayed with. Another site that can connect you with temporary renters is Vacation Rental By Owner, but that's usually for solo access to your pad while you vacate the premises.

You don't have to have a swanky pad to host guests. Just a clean, comfy, fairly-priced space. Image via Lochoaymca/Wikimedia Commons.

3. Have that rummage sale now instead of waiting for the summer.

If you have an accumulation of items you're storing away with the intention of having one big weekend sale, try something different. Facebook features local rummage sale groups in nearly every city, and often the members sell items one at a time. So take a picture, post it, and see if anyone's interested. You could wind up with a cleaner home and extra cash for paying off your cards.

Screenshot from Facebook.

4. Teach a course online if you have a special set of skills to share.

Through Udemy or Skillshare, you can create a course based on skills you are proficient in and enroll online students. Are you able to teach coding, YouTube optimization, marketing basics, or social media strategy? You could be sitting on extra cash you can use to pay off debt!

Screenshot from Udemy.

5. Re-evaluate the level and scope of gifting you do annually.

Giving is so fun! It feels so good to have a little something for people you appreciate in your life. But the truth is, for a lot of us, it's become an unsustainable strain in this economy.

It's not worth it to push ourselves into debt to fulfill what we think we have to do to keep up with expectations.

Does your extended family give every adult family member gifts? Talk with them and let them know you'd rather do a gift exchange.

Consider handmade gifts. It sounds hokey but believe it or not, people often really love getting something so personal — it feels like being part of your real inner circle to get something someone made themselves.

I made jars of preserved lemons last year, and including all supplies, ingredients, and decorative ribbon, it cost me about $30 to have a little gourmet-something to give to about 15 people I wanted to have a gift for.

What tastes better than not being in debt? Image by Jules/Flickr.

With a little forethought and planning, you can set yourself up to spend much less next year and stop the cycle of debt.

Go forth, you generous gifter, you. May the winds of financial resourcefulness propel you forward.

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We weren't paid to share any of the websites in this post. They're just some helpful examples for the ideas we're sharing!

Thumbnail by John Henderson/Flickr.

Meet the student fighting for his country's native language. He's great.

A very specific request reveals a pretty great life lesson.

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This kid has a point. About life. About relating to other human beings.

He's talking about being earnest and doing your best. In this case, it's in order to pronounce the language of your neighbors. But when you think about it ... this is true of life, right? What a great way to be.

Enjoy seven minutes of well-researched wisdom. (I can't believe this kid, whose name is Finnian Galbraith, is only in high school! And he did this for a school project?!)

"I wrote this speech initially for a speech competition in 2014 because I see this as a big issue and I believe it is very important that we take action," Finnian wrote.

I highly recommend watching the whole video. But if you can't, here are the biggest lessons.

It's OK to not be perfect.

But people deserve respect. All that matters is that you make an effort.

And who knows? You might get invited to a fun party by a Māori celeb just for the effort.

Love this dude. You

All that matters is that you are trying.

Finnian came up with this magical state of trying when he noticed the way people in his native New Zealand were (mis)pronouncing Māori words.

Māori is an official language of New Zealand, which means there's basically one way to pronounce this extremely rare language. So when folks from the country where it originated mispronounce it, it's not like, "Oh, but I'm saying it with an accent!" — it's more like, "Oh, I don't care!"

Which is a shame because Māori words are all over the place in New Zealand.

Such as the longest place name in New Zealand. Image via Archives New Zealand/Flickr.

Image via Map of the Urban Linguist/Flickr.

Image via luvjnx/Flickr.

There's even a Māori Wikipedia! And it's a good thing because Māori is a rare language!

While I shouldn't have to convince you that Māori is an awesome culture — because, hello, they're people and they deserve respect — here's a quick dip into the culture.

From films with Māori characters like "Whale Rider" or the less intense "Eagle vs. Shark" (starring Jemaine Clement of "Flight of the Conchords fame," who's of Māori descent)...

GIFs via "Whale Rider" and "Eagle vs. Shark."

...to dances like the Haka...

Māori is the language of the indigenous people of New Zealand, and it shares cultural origins with the Haka that the national rugby team All Blacks performs. Have you seen 'em? GIFs via New Zealand All Blacks.

...to the hardcore tattoos, beautiful landscapes, cool art, and the Māori battalion from World War II.

Image via Imperial War Museum/Wikimedia Commons.

Also, the main writer on the new Disney princess movie "Moana," Taika Waititi, is Māori!

It's EASY to see a culture worth respecting.

Respect!

That's what it's all about.

I agree with this kid. It's not about being perfect. But what matters is that when given the chance to preserve a culture and show respect for your neighbors ... you take it!

You try.

That's true of pronouncing Māori, but it's also true of life. Wisdom is all around us!

Kia ora!

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Original via Finnian Galbraith. H/t to Taika Waititi, who tweeted about Finnian.

Bad weeks don't seem so rough when you apply this perspective to life. Here's how.

Sometimes life seems really short, and other times it seems impossibly long. But this chart helps to emphasize that it’s most certainly finite.

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This post was originally published on Wait But Why.

This is what a long human life looks like in years:

And here’s a human life in months:

But today, we’re going to look at a human life in weeks:

Each row of weeks makes up one year. That’s how many weeks it takes to turn a newborn into a 90-year-old. It kind of feels like our lives are made up of a countless number of weeks. But there they are — fully countable — staring you in the face.

Before we discuss things further, let’s look at how a typical American spends their weeks:

Sources: [1][2][3][4][5].

There are some other interesting ways to use the weeks chart, too:

"Current week" as of May 2014.

But how about your weeks?

Sometimes life seems really short, and other times it seems impossibly long. But this chart helps to emphasize that it’s most certainly finite. Those are your weeks, and they’re all you’ve got.

Given that fact, the only appropriate word to describe your weeks is precious. There are trillions upon trillions of weeks in eternity, and those are your tiny handful.

Going with the “precious” theme, let’s imagine that each of your weeks is a small gem, like a 2 mm, .05-carat diamond.

Here’s one:

If you multiply the volume of a .05-carat diamond by the number of weeks in 90 years (4,680), it adds up to just under a tablespoon.

Looking at this spoon of diamonds, there’s one very clear question to ask: “Are you making the most of your weeks?”

In thinking about my own weeks and how I tend to use them, I decided that there are two good ways to use a diamond:

1) Enjoying the diamond.

2) Building something to make your future diamonds or the diamonds of others more enjoyable.

In other words, you have this small spoonful of diamonds and you really want to create a life in which they’re making you happy.

And if a diamond is not making you happy, it should only be because you’re using it to make other diamonds go down better — either your own in the future or those of others. In the ideal situation, you’re well-balanced between #1 and #2 and you’re often able to accomplish both simultaneously (like those times when you love your job).

Of course, if a diamond is enjoyable but by enjoying it you’re screwing your future diamonds (an Instant Gratification Monkey specialty), that’s not so good. Likewise, if you’re using diamond after diamond to build something for your future but it’s not making you happy and seems like a long-term thing with no end in sight, that’s not great either.

The worst possible way to use a diamond is by accomplishing neither #1 nor #2 above. Sometimes “neither” happens when you’re in either the wrong career or the wrong relationship, and it’s often a symptom of either a shortage of courage, self-discipline, or creativity. Sometimes “neither” happens because of a debilitating problem.

We’ve all had "Neither Weeks" and they don’t feel good.

When a long string of Neither Weeks happens, you become depressed, frustrated, hopeless, and a bunch of other upsetting adjectives. But it’s inevitable to have Neither Weeks, and sometimes they’re important — it’s often a really bad Neither Week that leads you to a life-changing epiphany.

It can all be summed up like this:

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This post was originally published on Wait But Why, and all photos are used here with permission. Wait But Why posts regularly, and they send each post out by email to over 275,000 people! Enter your email here and they’ll put you on the list (they only send a few emails each month).

If you like this, check out "How to Pick Your Life Partner," "Why Procrastinators Procrastinate," and "11 Awkward Things About Email."

Thumbnail image via iStock.

France figured out how to make its grocery stores feed even more people.

It's a first for Europe — and a smart example for the rest of the world.

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What happens to the apples that no one buys at the grocery store?

You've been there: looking at apples (or other produce) and examining what's in front of you before deciding on "the one." The first apple you grabbed wasn't ripe enough, and the second one had a weird shape. The third was too mushy. But that last one? It was perfect. Into the cart and on you go.

But what happens to the apples and the other food you didn't buy — and no one else did either? Too often, that perfectly good, unsold food ends up in the trash.

That'll soon be changing in France.

All of the apples by Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images.

France just passed a bipartisan bill that bans grocery stores from throwing out unsold food.

Instead of discarding food items that are approaching their sell-by date, French supermarkets will be required to donate the food to charities or to turn it into animal feed or compost.

On the heels of the Paris climate change agreement, France is hoping to find a solution that helps the hungry while also helping the environment.

Many families in the world struggle to find food to eat. France is said to throw away almost 8 million tons of food every year, and grocery stores are a big contributor. Between people being picky about the aesthetics of their food, overstocked shelves at the store, and sell-by dates that don't actually mean that much, there is room to explore how to keep more food in tummies and less in the landfill.

"Today, when a supermarket like Carrefour finds even a tiny fault with a crate of its branded yogurts, it sends the whole batch back to the dairy producer, which is legally obliged to destroy the lot even if it is all of excellent quality," Guillaume Garot, one of the legislators who framed the law, told the Telegraph.

Photo by Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images.

The law, which passed on Dec. 10, 2015, will make it possible for charities to have access to more edible food, like crates of yogurts, that would otherwise be destroyed. It'll target stores with retail space of over 4,300 square feet (so ... big ones) and is expected to go into effect once the Senate votes on it in early 2016.

The initiative won't just feed people. It'll also make the environment happier.

According to the United Nations, if wasted food became its own country, it would be the #3 contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the entire world. That's pretty wild when you think about it. Throwing away leftovers or seeing food in a grocery store's dumpster doesn't seem like that big of a deal until you see what it's doing on a global scale.

The United States should take note: We waste enough food to fill a 90,000-seat football stadium every single day.

Enough to fill the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena, California ... every day. Photo by Ken Levine/Getty Images.

Yes, just let your head wrap around that for a second.

We're throwing away more than one-third of all the food that's produced in the country every year. Consumers do play the biggest part in that food waste, but grocery stores are responsible for throwing away 10% of it. We're using as many tricks as possible to reduce the waste, but there's more that can be done.

France is setting a strong example of legislators from both sides of the aisle working together to solve some of the biggest issues of our time.

It's easy to think of many world issues as separate, but that's not always the case. The connections between hunger, poverty, food waste, and climate change show that simple solutions can be found all over — even in an apple bin.

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Ever heard of the 'pink tax'? It's real and cutting into women's finances in a big way.

Many products cost more for women than men. We call bull.

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A few years ago, a girlfriend took the pack of women’s razors from my cart and switched them out for the brand’s men’s razors.

Why? Because they were almost a dollar cheaper.

Photo via kropekk_pl/Pixabay.

It’s a little lifehack that lots of women use: If it’s pink, the men’s version is probably less expensive. But now, we have some hard data to prove just how prevalent the problem is.

This month, the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs confirmed what most women already know to be true: Women pay more than men for a lot of the same products.

The study compared women’s and men’s versions of almost 400 products for sale in the city or online, and they found that 42% of the time, women’s products — products that were exactly the same as men’s — cost more.

It may not seem like a huge deal, an extra 50 cents here or there maybe, but it adds up. A similar study in California from 1994 found that this "gender pricing" led women to spend $1,351 more than men every single year for the same stuff. Not cool.

Now, factor in that women earn less than men … AND they sometimes get saddled with "luxury" taxes for tampons and pads … AND they are usually expected to purchase and wear cosmetics almost every day...

I’m gonna guess that your face looks like this right now:

GIF from "Orange Is the New Black."

According to the NYC Consumer Affairs report, women pay an average of 7% more than men for the same product.

Some of the worst offenders: shampoo, razors, and lotion.

It turns out that women pay 48% more for similar shampoo and conditioner just because they’re branded for women. Lotion for women had about an 11% markup. And razor cartridges like these on average cost 11% more for women than men, too.

All screenshots from the NYC Consumer Affairs report.

Toys and accessories for kids were also pretty heavily marked up.

The report found that one type of scooter sold by Target was $25 more, just because it was pink.

Something tells me that pink coat of paint did not cost 25 bucks.

The gender divide in toys is already pretty messed up as it is, even without gender pricing.

Clothing costs women more, too.

Similar articles of clothing are more pricey for women about 40% of the time.

It’s not just the obvious stuff, either. A back brace (!) for a woman costs about 17% more than a man’s back brace.

Women also pay about 12% more for canes than men.

This "pink tax" doesn’t make sense, and over time, it can seriously cut into women’s finances.

Luckily, consumers are already fighting back. After the report came out, people started tweeting about the cost of gender pricing and calling out unfairly priced products.

Does this piss anyone else off?? #genderpricing http://pic.twitter.com/YXhltjSMxG
— Jordan Bohr (@Joj_Bohr) May 27, 2015

Gender pricing in effect! Please explain @BIGW and #floaties???same product different colour! #genderpricing #shame http://pic.twitter.com/DUhXlCsVEM
— Terri Mercieca (@fraisesauvage) December 27, 2015

If you find products with a "gender tax" on the women’s version, you can call them out by tweeting the item with the hashtag #genderpricing.

Let’s make sure that retailers and manufacturers get the message.

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Thumbnail photo via iStock.

Today's temperatures at the North Pole are scaring scientists around the world.

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The North Pole is famous for many things. 24-hour darkness, polar bears, and of course, being the home of Santa Claus.

One thing it's definitely not known for, though, is balmy, casual, "Hey, how cold is it? Do you think I need a light jacket?" type temperatures.

The north pole is freezing. It's one of the coldest places on Earth. In fact, it's sometimes colder than Mars. Mars!

The frozen ice-ball where Matt Damon lives. Photo by NASA/Getty Images.

But according to scientists, a storm the likes of which few have ever seen is about to raise north pole temperatures to as high as 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

That's about 50 degrees warmer than usual and is, according to meteorologist Eric Holthaus, "absolutely terrifying."

It's always comforting when a scientist uses the words "absolutely terrifying."

The biggest reason behind that terror? Water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. But if it gets warmer than that, ice melts. If the North Pole (which is covered in sea ice) begins to melt, sea levels everywhere could quickly rise to dangerous levels.

Rising sea levels have already started to affect areas like Robbins, Maryland. Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.

The storm is on its way to becoming one of the strongest in the North Atlantic's history.

It's a "meteorological marvel" that has so far ripped through Texas in the form of brutal tornados, dumped record amounts of rain onto the Midwest, and is now moving on with the intention of flooding an already soaked U.K. ... and bringing hoodie weather to one of the coldest places on the planet.

It rained so much in London this year that everyone was required to buy cool umbrellas. Photo by Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images.

Hurricane-force winds and alarmingly low barometric pressure are pushing it into the category of "bombogenesis..." a term used to describe "meteorological bombs" that often devastate large areas.

One piece of good news, though: The 230-mile-per-hour jet stream that the storm caused in the North Atlantic actually shortened flights from New York to London to a little over five hours. (It usually takes six or seven.)

Meteosat-10 infrared animation w/Atlantic low pressure system starting to rapidly intensify while moving quickly NE. http://pic.twitter.com/Ikg58wCSoO— NWS OPC (@NWSOPC) December 28, 2015

"This, more than any other extreme weather event in a remarkable year for the climate, feels like something new," writes climate blogger Robert Scribbler.

And it has been a remarkable year for the climate. The east coast just had its warmest Christmas ever. Manhattan was over 70 degrees at noontime, and in Queens, people were surfing. Yeah. Surfing.

Surfers flocked to Rockaway Beach this Christmas because the waves were "totally tubular" or whatever they say. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.

So what in the lukewarm world is going on here?

Well, as you can probably imagine, climate change is playing a big part.

According to many climate scientists, including Michael E. Mann of the Penn State Earth System Science Center, regular El Nino ocean temperature fluctuations are being made worse by human-caused climate change.

No--record warmth isn

All of which is causing worse storms than usual.

Robert Scribbler writes that the strong winds and tropical air associated with the storm system "reeks of human-forced warming of the Earth's climate."

And although some remain skeptical of the correlation in this case, it's hard to imagine a situation where record-breaking-ly warm air being hurled at the North Pole is a good thing.

The only positive outcome I can imagine is that Santa, who obviously spends his downtime hang gliding and reading mystery novels in Bermuda, might not have to go anywhere else this year. He could probably just have a barbecue in his backyard with all his reindeer.

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Thumbnail photo by David Cheskin/WPA Pool/Getty Images.