Christmas Budget

I don't know about many of you, but we created a Christmas budget. Last year, we spent about $1,200 on Christmas, everything from a new tree to presents. We decided to put everything on credit cards instead of pulling it straight out of our bank account. This was not the smartest things for my husband to do considering the interest rates to accumulates. So in the long run, we ended up spending more than $1200. This ended up taking us 4 months to pay off. 

This year we created a Christmas budget. Every month we set aside $100. We put it in a place where we would not be tempted to spend it. When November came around, we had $1,100 dollars that we could dabble with. This was nice because when it came to Black Friday shopping, I didn't have to stress or have the guilt that I was spending money that we didn't have, which in turn would get us into debt in the long run.

 Well, this Christmas, it was nice having $1,100 to work with; however, my daughter broke one of our iPads. So this was an added expense that we wanted to replace. So on Black Friday, we ended up getting two new iPad Airs to replace our Apple iPad IIs. This consumer $600 of our Christmas budget. With them being under the age of 5, they don't understand the concept of money, so we ended up buy more gifts, smaller ones because of the amount we have already spent. But purchasing these, made us go over our budget. So, back to our credit card debt...ugh!

 Four changes that I will make to our Christmas Budget for next year:

 1. Set aside $125 every month. This will hopefully help eliminate any overspending based on the amount that I spent this year.

2. Make a list of everyone that I need to purchase for. I will make a list of everyone in my family, family grab bags, teachers, co-workers who have made an helped me throughout the year.

3. From this list, put a price of how much I am going to spend on each person and budget it to my $1500.

4. Lastly, when I go Black Friday shopping bring a cash, which is a risk but in my area, there aren't many muggings. Another option is to get a pay-as-you-go charge card (caution: most of these have some type of monthly fee).

 I am not saying that there won't be flaws or that this will work for everyone. This is what I plan on doing with my Christmas budget for next year. Hopefully, it works because there is nothing that I want more than to get financially stable and pay off out debts.