10 Things You Already Know {But Will Probably Forget} About Sticking to Your Budget at Christmas

Guest post by Christy of The Simple Homemaker

Christmas is just around the corner. While your kids are enjoying sweet dreams of stuffed stockings and presents under the tree, you’re suffering through nightmares about your budget shattering like Humpty Dumpty on an off day. It’s a legitimate fear. Through some strange twist of cosmic irony, people who are religiously responsible with their finances eleven months out of the year, often ditch reason and overspend when Christmas temptations roll around.

Not this year!

If you’ve been reading Stacy’s blog for any length of time, the following money-saving principles should be firmly ingrained in your head. Nevertheless, I’m going to ingrain them a little deeper this December to help ward off holiday-induced budgetary dementia and financial frazzle.

10 Things You Already Know {But Will Probably Forget} About Sticking to Your Budget at Christmas

1. Never ever ever ever ever go anywhere without a list (and cookies). Lists (and cookies) are life savers. I’m not kidding about the cookies.
2. Shop with cash. It’s easier to stick to your budget and harder to spoil the kids if you use cash. Second choices (and what I use) are either gift cards (especially purchased through Scrip or another charitable program) or a debit card. Don’t use credit. It has cooties. Credit cooties are very, very bad.
3. Write everything down, including that 50-cent garage sale find for Grandpa. It all adds up, and come January you’ll be wondering where your money went if you don’t have a Hansel-and-Gretel-style paper trail.
4. Shop used – Craig’s List, Ebay, thrift stores, resale shops, garage sales, swaps, local Facebook shopping networks, and Freecycle (everything’s free) are all amazing resources for frugal shoppers. Consider bartering with a friend to swap gifts or services, or try selling a few items to earn a little extra Christmas cash. Cha-ching!
5. Homemade is great, but do the math before you do the work. Sometimes buying ingredients or supplies is more expensive than buying an equivalent gift. Sometimes.
6. Re-gifting is the new awesome. Says who? Me. ‘Nuf said.
7. Be on your guard around sales. What?! Yeah, be wary of them. They often tempt you to buy far too much of something or to spend money on things nobody will ever use, like a lame gift. Buying a lame gift and saving 50% is worse than not buying a gift and saving 100%. Not only have you spent money you shouldn’t have, but you’ve introduced lameness into Christmas…which is totally lame. Stick to your list (number one), and find items on sale that you were going to buy anyway – lameness gone.
8. It’s not about the quantity. Save money on gifts by sticking to a set (low) number, like four or three…or two or one. Make them thoughtful gifts, not necessarily expensive. Need ideas? Stacy has 100 Days of Frugal Christmas Gifts on Facebook, and I have A BIG Long List of Affordable Gift Ideas over at The Simple Homemaker. We’ve got your back!
9. Arrange with your grown family members to give family gifts or experience gifts instead of individual gifts. This not only saves money, but it totally cuts back on my personal arch-nemesis, Clutter, and his evil sidekick, Insanity.
10. Don’t buy anything before Christmas that can wait until after Christmas when the prices are ridiculously low. Record your after-Christmas purchases (like wrapping paper) so you don’t buy the same items twice.
11. And a bonus tip: don’t use the holidays as an excuse to break your budget. Don’t do it. Not even a little bit. No gift is worth piling debt and financial misery onto your family’s shoulders. Not even cookies.

But, Christy, we know all this stuff already.

Good! You should. But knowing these ten (plus one) tips is not the same as applying them out where temptation lurks. It’s like memorizing your multiplication facts at your own kitchen table while your mother bakes chocolate chip cookies and smiles lovingly at you, versus using those facts on a two-hour exam filled with word problems while your teacher looms over you glowering and slapping her hand with a ruler. In other words, these principles will do you absolutely no good if you don’t follow them fanatically throughout December, and that means not giving into any of these:

• whining
• begging
• impulse buying
• puppy brown eyes
• unrealistic wish lists
• pressure to conform
• showing love by over-spending
• competing with other gift-givers
• prioritizing being the cool mom and your children’s reactions over the budget (tempting, I know!), and
• as much as I hate to say it, the desire to spoil your man beyond your budget’s ability to manage it

You can do it! You can take what Stacy and Barry have taught you and apply it to Christmas. Stick to your guns, and resist the seductive lure of holiday over-spending that will only frazzle your holidays and rob you of the true joy of the season. Come January, you’ll thank yourself.

Keeping your spending in check is just one of the many ways I discuss regaining the joy of Christmas in my new ebook, From Frazzled To Festive: Finding Joy & Meaning in a Simple Christmas. As a thank you for letting me join the festivities here at Humorous Homemaking, you groovy people get 20% off with the code 20FORSTACY through December 15. (This is your first test. Don’t forget tip number seven—only buy it if you’ll read it!) Check it out here and start learning how to add more joy and meaning into your family’s Christmas!

Merry Christmas, new friends! Thanks for having me!

I’d love to hear your best holiday savings tips in the comments.

Christy Bagasao is the face and pen behind The Simple Homemaker and author of the book From Frazzled to Festive: Finding Joy and Meaning in a Simple Christmas. Christy was once burdened by unrealistic expectations; her life was over-booked, over-cluttered, and overly stressful. She has since learned to embrace an uncomplicated life and to find joy in the simple things–particularly faith and family.

Christy and her husband, contemporary Christian musician Stephen Bautista, travel the USA full-time with their music mission. Together with their seven “roadschooled” children and their 125-pound dog, they live in a 300-square-foot travel trailer which they tow behind their big white van, the Bagabus. Yes, this family knows a thing or two about simplifying. They share their adventures at The Travel Bags.