Christmas is Expensive!

Just like it is for everyone else, December is a very expensive month for us. Entertainment, charity, gifts, traditions, and parties are expensive.

We like to have fun; and there’s no better time like the holidays to enjoy yourself! This year, we took the kids to see a local production of “A Christmas Carol”. Although it was a local production, it was very well done!

Although we are in debt, we try very hard to give to charity, especially during the holidays. We don’t tithe as regularly as we should, so we try to give a lot during the Christmas season. We focus on giving to local charities. We take The Kids to our mall where they pull ornaments from the giving tree and they pick out and buy gifts. We also did the same thing at church this past week. We all picked a “need” off the angel tree and then we will shop for it. Our church packed boxes for Samaritan’s Purse and we all packed and delivered a box for that. Lastly, we are adopting a family this year through another small local charity. We are taking a child shopping and he gets to spend $20 per member of his family on Christmas gifts for them. This is the first time we have done this and though we are in debt we know we are better off than so many people and feel that it’s worth it so donate to this charity. It will slow our debt progress by a little but more importantly it will help someone and show our children how important it is to help and support charities when you can.

I went way over my gift budget. Quite honestly I don’t even know how much I went over because I just spent and didn’t keep track. That is one of my goals for next year: to keep track of my spending and see how much I actually spend and where. That goes right along with my goal of budgeting for Christmas next year. I have a huge family and we buy for every member of our family. Most people don’t understand, but that’s how we do it. I also have a few friends that I buy for and of course stocking stuffers and small gifts for people at work.

Another big expense we have at Christmastime is the Christmas party we host every year. We supply all the food and I give out a small favor. The food probably runs us between $600 – 700. Again, I’ve never really kept track. But next year I plan to log how much everything costs so that I can make a realistic budget and savings goal for the following year. I also always provide a small favor, usually something that is semi-hand made. I’ve given out homemade potpourri, bath salts, bottles of wine, cheese spreaders, soaps with handmade cards, and many things like that. After all is said and done, I usually only spend about $2 – 3 per favor, but the cost does vary. This year, I bought candles at the Dollar Tree and “painted” Christmas trees on them with brush-tip Sharpie markers. I also ordered small match boxes and tied them to each candle with a festive ribbon. I also give the same small gift to my co-workers. This year, after costs, the favor averaged $1.70 each and that includes having to buy the pens. (My friend was getting rid of a ton of ribbon and I told her I would take it. She had lots of holiday/Christmas ribbon so I didn’t even have to buy the ribbon to tie the matches on!) I’m very pleased with how this year’s favor turned out and how inexpensive they ended up being and I have the pens to use on future crafts!

Family traditions are very important to me. And we have a lot of them, many of which revolve around Christmas. We go the Charles Dickens Christmas Fair, we spend one day in San Francisco, we build gingerbread houses, and so many more that I can’t even think of right now. All of these things cost money. And in my opinion it is money well spent. Anything that lets us spend time together as a family and make memories is priceless!

The list of things that cost money during the holidays could go on and on so I’m going to stop right here. This was just a rambling post of why it is so hard to make progress towards our debt in December. I don’t want to sound too much like a Debbie Downer because we have made progress towards our debt, but as always not as much as I would have liked. Coming up in a week or so I will do a full debt update and I’ll be able to see exactly where we are: how much debt we have and how much debt we paid off. But until then, wish us progress!