# Holiday and Christmas bonuses — what to do with the extra salary months > Fourteen months of salary against twelve months of spending. How to decide where the bonuses go before they arrive. Source: https://trybica.com/guides/extra-salary-months/ Updated: 2026-08-17 --- In Portugal — and in several other European countries — you receive fourteen months of salary and live twelve months of expenses. It's one of the few structural advantages in the system, and most people waste it. Not through a lack of discipline, but because they never decided anything about it. The money lands, the account looks comfortable for three weeks, and somewhere between Christmas and February there's no trace of it left. ## Why bonuses disappear without being spent on anything They don't disappear into large purchases. They disappear because a bigger balance shifts the normal pattern upwards for a few weeks: less attention at the till, more meals out, the postponed purchase that now "fits". None of those feels like a decision. Added up, they consume an entire month's salary. The defence isn't willpower. It's moving the money out of sight before it can shift the pattern. ## The accounting mistake that makes it worse There's a second, subtler problem: bonuses ruin every average you might calculate. Add up the year's income and divide by twelve, and you get a monthly figure that matches no real month. You're looking at a fictional month roughly 17% richer than your ten ordinary ones. That matters because nearly every decision worth making uses that number: how much you can save, what mortgage payment you can carry, how large the emergency fund should be. The rule of thumb is simple: **plan ordinary life against an ordinary month's salary, and treat the bonuses as separate arrivals with their own destination.** If your monthly life only balances once the bonuses are averaged in, monthly life is too tight and the bonuses are already spent before they arrive. The [fixed versus variable spending guide](/guides/fixed-vs-variable-spending/) helps you find the ordinary-month number. ## A priority order that holds up There's no single right answer, but there is an order that works for most situations: **1. Expensive debt first.** Credit cards, personal loans, revolving credit. Paying down debt at 12% is a guaranteed 12% return — better than any safe savings product will pay you, with no risk and no decision to make. **2. Finish the emergency fund.** If it doesn't yet cover the months it should, this is where a bonus makes the most difference. One full bonus takes most people from "barely anything" to "nearly there". See [how big the fund should be](/guides/emergency-fund-size/). **3. Known annual expenses.** Car insurance, road tax, property tax, servicing, school supplies. These arrive every year and still catch people out. Setting the money aside from the bonus removes an entire category of "unexpected" costs that were never unexpected. **4. After that, whatever you like.** A trip, work on the house, investing. The point isn't austerity — it's that the first three priorities make everything else cheaper, because you stop financing surprises with credit. ## The mechanical step that does the work Decide the destination **before** the money arrives, and move it in the week it lands. Concretely: on the day the bonus hits, transfer the already-decided slices to where they're going to sit — the deposit, the certificates, the debt payment. What remains in the current account is what's available, and the normal pattern doesn't shift because there's nothing extra in view. This works better than any spending rule, because it needs one decision a year rather than six weeks of vigilance. The [term deposits versus certificates guide](/guides/term-deposits-vs-savings-certificates/) covers where to park the part that stays. ## How to tell whether it's working The signal is simple, and visible the following year: **your net worth steps up in July and November, and doesn't come back down.** If net worth shows two annual peaks that dissolve over the following months, the bonuses are funding ordinary spending. If each peak settles onto a new floor, they're doing what they should. This is the easiest pattern to spot on a net-worth chart over time — and one of the reasons it's worth having that number calculated for you rather than added up by hand once a year. The [net worth guide](/guides/calculate-net-worth/) covers the calculation. ## A note on taking it spread out In Portugal you can opt to receive the bonuses spread across the year instead. Financially it's close to neutral; psychologically it isn't. Spread out, the money arrives in twelve small instalments that merge into the salary and vanish into the normal pattern without ever being a decision. In two large payments, it's impossible not to notice — and what you notice is what you can decide about. If you're a saver by default, it makes little difference. If you aren't, the two large payments are the easier version to take advantage of.