Plan Now for Happier Holiday Spending in 2012
NAME: Z
STATUS: Spent
GOAL: Lightweight gifts
PEEVE: My Diet Coke habit
GLEE: 50 or 70 percent off holiday stuff!
Every year I set a budget for holiday spending that includes gifts, food, stocking stuffers, Christmas cards and postage. Every year I go over and I can’t always blame the U.S. Postal Service.
This is one tradition I’d like to break. This recent season I got especially nostalgic for one holiday tradition of my youth — the old-fashioned Christmas Club bank account. In our house, a Christmas Club account was part of growing up. Mom would take us to the bank in January of the year we would turn 12. I tried to deposit $2 week from my babysitting cash so I’d have close to $100 when the time came to start shopping.
Did You know?The Postal Service will deliver more than 20 billion pieces of mail throughout the season. source
Christmas tree farmers sold $493 million worth of pine trees last year. source
Consumers’ use of credit cards to shop during the 2010 holiday season is the lowest since 2002. More Americans are expected to use their debit cards or cash for holiday purchase to ensure they don’t go over their budget. source
I’m not like 90 years old or anything, but budgeting for important purchases was just how we lived. We had kid-sized envelopes for Sunday church offerings; we started saving for Christmas in January. We didn’t spend $5 a day or more buying Diet Cokes while out running errands. We took brown-bag lunches to school, a habit that stayed with me until early college but fell away as I got older and food got more convenient but less healthy.
It feels as if I spent more on quick meals and sodas-on-the-run some days this holiday season than I did on gifts. The cost of shipping made me wince; the cost of a simple beef roast made me think we should eat more kale. Well, we should probably eat more kale anyway.
Try These:
Try this holiday spending worksheet to get started on next year.
Take this quiz to see how your holiday spending matches up to most people's spending.
Spend some time with a slideshow on ways to cut expenses for 2012 holidays.
Did you know that financial experts recommend limiting holiday spending to no more than 1.5 percent of your total income? That means someone who makes $40,000 should spend $600. Seriously?
Well, I can’t make any promises but I do plan to start a Christmas Club account – even if it means hiding the money. At $15 a week, I’d have more than $600 by the end of October 2012. It’s a start, as is remembering that the best gifts as well as the best experiences can’t be bought online or anywhere else. They just happen. In 2012, I will clear away some of the clutter to make more room for them.
