Still Making Christmas Plans

So Christmas rolls around the same time every year and yet every year we end up putting in our credit card. That doesn’t make sense!

This year I am attempting to make some plans for Christmas and how to pay for it!

Just this past week I asked The Boy what he wanted for his birthday (in November) and Christmas. I’m going to ask The Girl this week, too. I explained to him, and I will to her too, that we can’t afford to wait until the week before Christmas to hear what they want. I told him we need to plan for stuff so that we can know how much we are going to want to spend. (*Sidenote – he seemed to understand because he already told us what he wants to do for his birthday.)

I have already bought one gift for The Husband and am working on a plan for what else I want to get him. In an older post, I talked about how I won two gift cards to Starbucks at a baby shower, I’m taking one of those to supplement The Husband’s other Christmas present and then I will be done with him.

I have bought a ton for our kids’ stockings and those are probably almost done. The same with The Husband’s, too. And I have some plans for gifts for adults/adult couples. At this point, it’s just a waiting game until I have money to pay for things.

We earn points for exercising from The Husband’s work/insurance. We save those points up and then redeem them for Amazon gift cards. Right now we have $210 waiting to be redeemed. We are going to redeem them in October so we can start shopping for Christmas.

We also have $290 waiting to be redeemed from our credit card. I am going to redeem that as a check instead of a statement credit in order to add to our Christmas budget.

Also, I am still awaiting 2 different retro checks: one at 1.56% for all of last year and one at 3.44% for a couple of months this year from a negotiated raise with our district.  Before taxes and deductions, the total for those two checks should be just over $1500. I’m hoping I will actually receive $800 into my accounts. (Our union president thinks we will be paid separately: one retro check in October and one retro check in November.)

We are looking to have about $1300 to spend on Christmas. I know to most people, this is a ton of money to spend on Christmas, but I have a huge family and buy for a ton of people! I shop for about 55-60 people altogether. We also have a Christmas party open house that we host every year and some family traditions that we do every year that cost money, too.

Our Christmas party is so fun and an opportunity to get to see some friends and family that we only see once a year. But it’s also very expensive. We buy pre-made foods that we would never normally buy and the costs definitely add up. In another effort to plan for Christmas, we will start buying food for the party in October and hopefully be able to fold a lot of it into our monthly grocery budget so it won’t be such a shock to our system come December.

We have probably already bought about 15 gifts. It’s actually not a bad start, but we still have much to do. But again, I can’t do anything until we actually have the money in hand.

If, by some small miracle, we don’t need to spend all the money on Christmas, anything left over will be sent towards debt. But I’m considering the fact that we are making a plan for Christmas, a win.

Again, this is all theoretical until we have the money in hand. And how much money I’m going to receive from my retro checks is just speculation until it hits my bank account. Regardless, I will put whatever the amount is towards paying for Christmas and I do know we have a guaranteed $500 as that money is already sitting and waiting for us to redeem it.

Whether this works out how I want it to or not, at least I am making a plan.