I am not going to lie, I used to be a bit of a Scrooge when it came to Christmas. Then I got married, and those of you who know my wife… well let’s just say we have had our decorations up for nearly three weeks now. So shortly after we got hitched and I was acting like old Ebenezer, Liz made it pretty clear to me that my Grinch attitude was not going to fly – I needed to do something about it.
I found myself evaluating why I had such a bad attitude about Christmas. As you can probably guess, it was not the holiday that turned me into a Grinch, it was the bills! I know many of you can probably relate and as the Holiday season is approaching I thought I would pass out a few pointers!
1.) Save throughout the year! It turns out that Christmas is every year on December 25th (shocker, I know). Try saving $25 every paycheck, I bet you wouldn’t even notice that amount missing. There are about 26 paychecks in a year so you could have $650 for Christmas!
Ok, well what if you didn’t save all year. Step 1: Start THIS year. Step 2: Try some of these options:
2.) Get back to the reason for the season with a homemade/no-gift holiday celebration. With so many families struggling these days, I think everyone could benefit from stepping back and remembering what is truly important.
3.) Pay cash, you still have a few weeks to save. Go out and only buy the gifts that you can pay cash for. This may be a little stressful up-front but when the day arrives and there is no credit card bill there will be significantly less stress.
4.) Consider implementing a cost limit on your gift giving. Maybe this year your gifts do not exceed $20 in cost!
Do you have other ideas that I didn’t mention here? What are you and your family doing this year? Leave a comment!
Andrew, you're so smart!
ReplyDeleteI love the ideas that you've posted, but I have to also give out one of my favorite gift ideas. It goes hand-in-hand with the homemade/no-gift holiday idea, but it's a bit further.
There are some deliciously (dastardly) amazing red velvet cake ball truffles that I make throughout the holiday season. Everyone wants one! And once they have one, they can't get enough! So I decided to give out my recipe in the form of a bake kit this season to many of my family members. Sharing a family recipe is not only a great way to start a conversation, but it promotes the sharing that is accentuated on these holidays. Now no one will have to wait for Christmastime to get my truffles, they can make them whenever they want throughout the year! :)