My favorite time of the year is Thanksgiving and December. I love the festivities and romanticism of the holidays. All the gift giving, special preparations, and celebrations of our Lord and Savior. And yet, despite the holiday cheer, November and especially December can be extremely stressful times of the year. Why is that? Money.
Do you know how much you spend on Christmas, birthdays, wedding presents, and anniversaries? Do you write and stick to a monthly budget? Or do those types of spending just sneak up on you and you deal with them as they arise?
Dealing with expenses as they arise can work to a degree, depending on your income, discretionary spending, and savings. Someone who makes a lot more income than their living expenses, who is always putting away a planned amount in savings, and still has extra money each month for non-necessities can probably deal with little unexpected expenses quite easily. They have planned, prepared, and can deal with crises big and small as they arise. The truth in this case is there are no unexpected crises. These people understand that the unexpected expenses are to be expected. It’s a necessary part of their budget that can’t be overlooked.
It’s a different story for the person or family who lives paycheck to paycheck, can’t afford to fix those ticking time-bombs on the junker car, or every extra dollar is going to school loans, or medical bills. They have not a single penny left over for indulgences! They want to put aside money for the December presents, and to fix the car, and for unexpected medical costs, but they just don’t have anything extra to set aside.
There are many reasons why you may or may not have the money to cover your monthly expenses, both justified and unjustified, but those problems and solutions are for another day / another article! Today I’m going to share an easy way to save for Christmas and not spend what you’ve put aside for it.
There are two general ways to increase one’s spending power – increase your income or decrease your expenses. I’m going to assume for the sake of keeping this article a readable length, that we don’t have the option of increasing our income. But we almost always can decrease our expenses. That brings me to step 1 in paying for Christmas.
Step 1. Decrease your Christmas Budget.
Oh no! She didn’t just! … ? … Oh yes I did. Don’t give up on me yet. At least read through the 3 steps before you judge whether it’s sage advice.
Holidays are expensive! There are several increases in expenses this time of year: 1. Gifts 2. Entertaining 3. Decorating 4. Traveling. Now we can’t exactly know that we are making a decrease unless we have a benchmark to measure against – the previous year’s Christmas budget. So start there and see if you can’t figure out what you spent last year, keeping that in mind as you read through the next sections.
Gift-giving.
We’ve trained our spouses, relatives, and especially our kids to expect nothing less than a pile of expensive gifts, sweets, and other indulgences. We’ve trained them to feel neglected when they receive fewer presents than last year. And we bribe our kids into being good by saying some version of, “If you don’t behave right this minute, you won’t be seeing that extra special so shiny so techy thingamajig under the Christmas tree!”
This is so wrong in so many ways! Sure, you might get the reaction you were wanting with immediate good behavior, but in the long run this is not productive. It reminds me of a time an ex-boyfriend thought I should be proud of him for not cheating on me. This train of thought is so backwards! When you bribe your kids into good behavior they get wired to think bad behavior is the norm and good behavior is above and beyond. Good behavior should be the standard. They need to behave because you are the parent and good behavior is the right thing to do.
Christmas gifts should be free of conditions. They are expressions of unconditional love and generosity, not disciplinary tools, for kids or for spouses.
Be wise as to how many gifts and how much money you spend on gift-giving, especially with kids. They don’t understand as easily as adults when this year’s pile of Christmas gifts is smaller than last year’s. Have you made gifts the focus of Christmas? Is it all about what your kids/family will be receiving? Or is it more about time spent with each other, gratefulness for our Savior, and helping those in need.
With these things in mind, see if you can reduce how much you spend on gift-giving.
Entertaining and decorating.
These budgets can also be reduced with a little creativity. Take the time to research low cost recipes, sales for ingredients, and DIY decorations. If you don’t have time to make your own decorations, at least make an effort to get good deals. One great way to is to buy discounted gift cards, as I explained in this article, Where to Get Outdoor Gear 50% Off. The same tactics in that article can often be applied to any kind of shopping.
Holiday Travel.
I’m not going to tell you to reduce your budget for holiday travel. Visiting family is important. Usually we are already getting free accommodations at a relative’s house, and it’s really hard to reduce traveling expenses during holidays. But do consider using Ebates to get some money back on your travel reservations. At the time of this article, Expedia gives back 10% through Ebates.
My husband and I try to visit our family anytime but Thanksgiving and Christmas because travel costs are so much more. But these are really special times of the year and great for seeing a bunch of family at once, so if you can afford it, then make it happen!
Step 2. Adjust your family’s expectations.
None of this budget reducing works without your family on board! “Adjusting your family’s expectations” does not mean asking your kids permission to get fewer, less costly presents this year. They will not agree to that, and it’s not up to them!
How do you go about changing their expectations? Well, this kind of discussion starts with the Why’s, and ends with the How’s. In the world of business management, (especially) when you expect resistance to change- a change that you know is good for the company but will be difficult- you must first start by explaining the problems that this change will solve, without yet saying what the change will be or will look like. This prepares the receiver of the message to understand the situation, to understand that a change is needed. So you start by explaining where you are at, where you want to be… and then after all that, explain how you’ll get there.
Is this open for discussion amongst the family? Totally up to you! Nobody knows your family better than you. You can open up the discussion for ideas on how to achieve your reduced budget, or you can plan it out and deliver the message. Just remember to explain the How’s after the Why’s.
Although this sequence of explaining Why’s and How’s will reduce the resistance, it still isn’t a magic equation for getting an ideal reaction. Change is hard, but this will make it a tad easier to swallow.
This doesn’t just apply to reducing kids Christmas gifts. You might be telling relatives, too, that this year you are working extra hard at reducing your Christmas budget so you’ll just be hand making a small gift for everyone instead of doing the usual extra personalized expensive gifts. And yes, it can be a strain dealing with the questions. Questions like, “Is everything okay financially? Do you need help?” Explain the best you can that you are trying to re-prioritize and make sure your kids don’t learn the wrong lessons from Christmas time.
After the whirlwind of the holidays is over, and life has returned to normal, sit down and evaluate what was a success and what wasn’t. Which of the changes really worked, and went over well? What would you like to repeat next year? What can you change to do better next year? Maybe the kids were surprisingly receptive to taking fewer gifts and they had suggestions of their own for reducing expenses, but when it came time to hosting dinner parties or entertaining it was really difficult to cut expenses. Evaluating now, while everything is still fresh will help you plan for next year. And if you are going to follow the advice of the next step, Step 3, then you’ll understand why it’s important to evaluate first thing in the new year!
Step 3. Save throughout the year with gift cards.
I don’t know about you, but when I’m given cash as a present, more often than not the cash does not go towards an actual present for myself. I don’t go shopping with it. It goes towards the bills. I can’t justify spending that cash on selfish pursuits when I have greater needs. It’s much more important to pay on those school and car loans at the moment than add another pair of shoes to the collection.
The same thing happens when I try to budget for things that are happening in the future – vacations, Christmas, car repairs that might be needed. My husband and I set aside the money for future needs, but then something more immediate comes up that requires us to spend that money. It’s not a bad choice to choose the immediate needs over the future Christmas plans. You can’t ignore that roof leak for the sake of saving for Christmas presents. It’s just how it goes when you are struggling to get financially free. Someday, after working hard and making the right choices consistently, it won’t be so difficult.
If you are the sole grocery shopper then you might like this last step, because it uses your grocery store to shop for Christmas. Most big grocery stores have a section full of gift cards, ranging from packs of $5 to single cards worth a couple hundred dollars. Remember that budget you came up with for Christmas? The one where you wrote down everyone you’ll be buying for, how much you’ll spend on them, and how much you’ll spend on entertaining and decorations, etc.? Well now you are going to start saving a little bit each month towards that December budget.
And you’re going to do it with gift cards. You’ll have to have an idea of the general kinds of gifts each person likes, or where you typically shop for them. For example, I know that my husband wants all his gifts from Bass Pro Shops, and yes I mean every single gift. So each month for four months I’m going to buy a $25 gift card to Bass Pro Shops when I’m at the grocery store. And we always by books for my dad, so I’ll get an Amazon.com gift card one month. I’m not giving the actual gift cards away, though. Of course, you can do that, and this method works even better if that’s what you typically give for gifts. But what I’m doing is buying the gift cards, and then using them to buy personalized gifts when Christmas time comes. In that way it’s already paid for, and I’ve spread the cost out over the year, and I can’t dip into that money to pay for bills. It’s set aside for presents and nothing else.
You could even pay for your increase in groceries in November and December by buying a couple extra grocery store gift cards.
Plus, if you find that there is room for improvement in the area of finding sales and couponing for your groceries, you might just be able to add these gift cards into your grocery budget without it ever increasing. The savings you get from couponing and only shopping sales would convert into the money you put towards gift cards. Of course, that only works if you aren’t already a mastermind at saving.
Now, I understand, that this gift card method just won’t work for everyone’s style of budgeting, or Christmas shopping. But it might be a tactic you can use to support whatever system you already have in place. Maybe you could use it to budget for those unexpected birthdays or housewarming gifts.
Whatever the case, I hope I helped you better evaluate your holiday spending situation, see a different perspective, or make some improvements. There’s always room for improvement even if you have more money than you need.
What clever or unique tips and tricks do you use to get through the expensive holiday season? Let me know with a comment!
Leave a Comment! Your email address will not be displayed.