Business instructor spoke about post holiday budgets

By Lethbridge Herald on January 15, 2026.

Herald photo by ALEXANDRA NOAD Lethbridge Polytechnic School of Business instructor Chris Hotton spoke to media about post holiday budgets on Thursday.

By Alexandra Noad

Local Journalism Initiative Reporter- Lethbridge Herald

With the new year in full swing, many people are focusing on their budgets, especially following weeks of increased spending over the holidays.

While creating a budget is important, Chris Hotton, instructor in the School of Business at Lethbridge Polytechnic says it’s important that the data collected to create the budget is accurate.

“The key thing with budgeting is, you have to be honest and you have to be accurate and you have to review it on a regular basis,” says Hotton. “It’s one thing to just kind of guess, but if you actually sit down and look at where you spend your money and then plan going forward, that provides you with a healthy budget structure.”

In the past, Hotton has helped people who would make a guess, but when looking at their financial statements the numbers were up to hundreds of dollars off. He encourages everyone when making a budget to look at financial statements to have accurate numbers.

Hotton emphasizes on the importance of creating a plan, saying it is crucial to not only balancing books and making ends meet, but it’s also essential when paying off debt.

“Everything in finance really hinges on being able to properly plan and set up a structure where you can take care of it.”

Finances are a cause of many people’s stress and Hutton says additional stressors such as inflation, job insecurity and housing prices play a huge factor when it comes to people budgeting.

“When we think of budgeting, we think of what are we spending our money on? But the other half of budgeting is where’s money coming from? If you have a stable job, you’re a lot more comfortable being able to predict where the money is going to go and if it’s an unstable situation, the economy is unstable. Some people kind of give up on budgeting because they don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Hotton adds that it’s very important to account for rising costs within your budget.

One reason many people fail with their budgets is they don’t allow themselves to have fun, Hutton says while it’s important you allow yourself to have fun, it’s important to set limits and say no.

The main goal of budgeting is to find a surplus within the budget to put towards debt and savings. Hotton adds that building an emergency savings is just as important to paying off debt.

“You want to have money to pay for (unexpected expenses) so it doesn’t blow up your budget.”

He adds that an emergency savings should be low risk and accessible so it can cover the unexpected expense.

As an instructor at a post-secondary institution, Hotton believes that starting to budget in early adult life will help develop those skills and lay a solid foundation for the future.

He also encourages those who are learning to budget to not be too tough on yourself because skills such as budgeting take time to learn.