Holiday Financials....pt. 1

When the holiday season rolls around, more and more people become depressed and withdrawn. Why is this? My personal opinion is because they have either just gotten last years Christmas paid off or are still paying on it. As a season of such beauty, spending time with family and friends, and for many the celebration of Christ's birth; I am always dismayed at the negativity.

So, here I am to give my opinions about holiday budgeting, and so much more!;)

I myself have always loved Thanksgiving and Christmas. However, I can remember a time when the holiday season gave me so much stress. The amount of money spent was constantly more than necessary, and for what?! You spend hundreds of dollars on gifts that you give, only for those gifts to be used a very limited amount of time and tossed in the trash.

Here's a little story. I can remember as a kid, we waited all year for those special gifts. For me it was Barbie stuff, and one year it was little miniature dolls(I can't remember the name of them.). I knew Mom and Dad couldn't afford to buy some of these things so every year, I asked Santa for them. Every year, I usually got 1 or 2 of those bigger items. As I got older, the price of my wants began getting higher, the holiday became nothing more than a time for gifts and gritting my teeth while dealing with family. (My parents were divorced, so we'd spend part of the holiday with each) Once I had a child, I found myself in a different situation. I began wondering why it is that Christmas gifts were the focus of such a magical season. So, I began the shift of our Holiday Seasons. Christmas was no longer a holiday focused on gifts, but instead focused on spending time with friends and family. Now, we have 2 kids and our Christmas is still centered on spending time with family and friends, with a few gifts and a really low budget! We do not use credit cards or finance any part of Christmas gift giving. We have also made the shift to only buying for our little family, and making gifts from our heart, with love for our extended family.

So, here is what we did years ago. Since our oldest started out with Christmas as I did, we explained that we had a conversation with Santa and that Mom & Dad would be buying his Christmas gifts so that other, less fortunate children could have gifts for Christmas. Santa usually still delivers 2-3 gifts. We have set a budget for each person in our little family. $100 is the per person total.(Includes Santa). So, we learned to get creative, no big or useless gifts and we don't do video games so that isn't even in the equation. Now, we've had to make a few adjustments as needed or as the budget allows. Our oldest is getting harder to buy for, his needs/wants are getting more expensive, and we do try to make sure each of our kids get the same number of gifts. We were pretty lucky it really only took a year or two to make the transition with our oldest, and this is all the youngest has ever known. We shifted to focus to what really matters...Family! We look forward to spend as much time as possible with family through the holidays. Our kids have so much fun playing with their Aunts, Uncles, Cousins and Grandparents. We love to cook and bake and share these items with all of them. This year we have decided that homemade gifts for our extended families will hopefully show them each, how much they mean to us. Everyone buys what they need and most of what they want, themselves, so it seems pointless to us to spend money we don't have. Making gifts from the heart makes so much more sense.

So, as the beginning holiday budgeting posts begin, I wish you a season of more financial sense, and more of what matters most...FAMILY!