How I Am Saving Money This Holiday Season
Let's paint a picture. It’s December 1st, you realize Christmas is around the corner, and you have not budgeted any money for gifts. This is my life every December. Maybe next December will be different, but for now, I’ll explain how I plan to get gifts for my loved ones this year without breaking the bank!
One of my biggest issues every year with gifting is that I tend to overspend. I believe this is largely because when looking for gifts, I don’t set a limit. So my gift buying process generally looks like this: I start thinking of gift ideas, pick a gift, and then look at the price. I don’t know about anyone else, but I struggle to find gifts. So by the time I have landed on one, I don’t think much about the price. I pull out my card and pay for it. I have three family members, so multiply that by three. This gets expensive, fast. This year, I am going to take a different approach. I am going to set a price limit per gift. The plan is to pick a price, then pick the gift. This will give me some guardrails to ensure I don’t shoot myself in the foot and spend a ridiculous amount of money. The idea of limits may seem simple to most people. I’ve just never done it. I believe this will help me not regret my money decisions this holiday season!
I mentioned earlier that every year I fail to budget for Christmas gifts. So I usually don’t have enough money in cash to spend. So what do I do? I use my trusty dusty Discover Credit Card throughout the whole month of December. Let's just say I have historically paid a lot of money in interest because of gifts. This year I have decided that I will not use my credit card for gift purchases. By not using my credit card, yes, I won’t be paying interest, but I also will know how much my limit will be per person. As I can only spend what I have on hand. For a long time, I never looked at how much I pay in interest on my credit card. Now that I am trying to be more conscious with my money, I keep an eye on that #. It’s amazing how much you can save by not borrowing from the banks. Once again, this may seem simple to most people. But sometimes, the simple things go over our heads. At least it went over mine.
My desired result with this plan is that I wake up on January 1st, not stressed about how much I spent on gifts, or the balance on my credit card. I hope to wake up looking forward to the new year and accomplishing even more money goals.
