The Christmas season is a joyous one; full of celebration, family, friends and fun. We decorate, exchange gifts, attend parties, have a blast … and spend tons of cash. Then January rolls around, the bills come flooding in, and our wallets are hit with holiday hangover.
For many families, Christmas presents a dilemma: the difficulty of staying out of debt, or the struggle of digging themselves out of debt in the following months (often just in time to begin the cycle again the following holiday season).
This intent of this blog is to give ideas and inspiration for you to turn the holidays around and arrive in January free of Christmas debt. Together, let’s take the challenge of celebrating Christmas debt-free.
For us, the best thing was to ensure that the number of people we were buying for didn't creep up over the years.
ReplyDeleteWe buy for out kids, their teachers, our parents, and a couple of other relatives. That's it. We make gift recommendations to the grandparents so that the kids have toys they want and will actually use long-term, and we keep it simple. We host a brunch for all of our friends and they walk out with a goodie bag of treats (chocolate-dipped pretzels) made by the kids, and we're done. Our children have not come to expect a huge mound of gifts under the tree and we plan on keeping it that way.
Being honest with people is key. We told relatives last year that due to expenses, this would be a low-budget Christmas. We told them in early November, so that they could plan their own gift-giving accordingly.
ReplyDeleteAlso - having young kids is a free pass to cheap gift-giving! Get portraits done and frame 'em! That what the grandparents want!