It's funny, Christmas is the same day every year but yet we have a hard time budgeting for gifts. Here are some tips that may help you stay on track.
- Determine exactly how much money you can afford to spend on gifts without using your credit cards, line of credits or overdraft
- Make a list of everyone you would like to buy a gift for
- Determine before you go shopping what you would like to purchase for each individual and how much each gift will cost
- Set aside the amount you plan to spend on each person in separate envelopes
- Start looking for sales; don't forget you can get some great online deals
- Go shopping
After making your list, you may find that you don't have enough money to buy a gift for everyone. You could either reduce the amount you're spending on some of the other people on your list, or you can remove some people from your list. This is a hard one to do, but it will force you to be creative. I've had people make me gifts, I've even had someone cook me my favorite meal as a gift.
Let me know what some of your ideas are for Christmas shopping.
3 comments:
I think buying gift cards ahead of time (like in October or even earlier) and then spending them in December is a good way to spread out your expenses and insure you have enough money during the holidays.
This is great post. I hadn't thought about using envelopes to separate out people and money before!
Bishop Nicholas of Myra in Asia Minor started a tradition of giving gifts to children in honor of the "Gifts of the Magi" and giving Christmas gifts to anyone other than a child was never meant to be.
If everyone stays by the original idea think of the savings.
I like the gift card idea!
Post a Comment