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Make a list of all the purchases you will need to make for Christmas. Make sure you include things like decorations, food, teacher gifts, and a budget for gifts you forget about. It should something like this. Food: turkey-$20 baking supplies-$40 Gifts for Immediate Family: Daughter 1- Dollhouse-$35 Grandma J Subscription-$15 Once you have your list made you might want to have parts your family can see and parts they can't. Daughter #1 doesn't need to know what she is getting while you check out your shopping list. Estimate how many weeks you have until Christmas. Is it 8 weeks? Then try to divide up the expenses into 8 weeks or cut it in half and try to spend half at each paycheck time. Finally, calculate how much you can afford to spend this Christmas. Divide that up into your segments just like you did your purchases. Can you do this all in cash this year. If you have to use a credit card, use the one with the lowest interest rate. Try to find the most economical sources for the things you need. You can go shopping for Christmas decorations at that upscale boutique or you can head to a large discount store or dollar store and find things. The price difference can be staggering. As you shop and wrap make a list of what you have bought for each person and hide it somewhere like inside your favorite book. Put the cost of each item next to it on the list. This way each time you shop you can quickly estimate how much you have spent and make sure that you are not overbuying for someone (this part is for us forgetful folks). Don't forget you can give gifts of time, baked gifts and handcrafted gifts and cards. Just keep that old fruitcake in the freezer. It needs another year. |