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Do the holidays have to mean bankruptcy?

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  Julia and Danny

  12.18.09 9:27am

  This time of year usually means shopping, stress and overdrafts!  Everybody is out buying somebody something somewhere.  Is it possible to make it through December without going into the red?  I think so!  There is no secret trick to it, no hidden sales...no special free-shipping days...just one simple concept: honesty.  "Honesty?" you say?  Yes!  Being honest with yourself, your budget and your family.  Danny and I have spent many Christmases overspending in an effort to get everybody SOMETHING.  We didn't want to leave anybody out and to be frank, there is a bit of ego involved in spending money on people.  That feeling of "ahh yes, this is a GOOD gift."...good meaning it's something they want and costs more than they would expect you to spend on it.  You know what I'm talking about...it's like pretending you're rich for a month!  Unfortunately this game of make-believe has a nasty hangover!  This year we were determined to do the holidays a little different.  We didn't really set aside money during the year for Christmas so we don't have a nice little savings account just for gifts.  It would be nice but eh...it just didn't happen this year.  How many of you are in the same boat?  We do have a savings account but it's our emergency account and we just received some more medical bills that will suck up a good portion of that money.  So what do we do?  Well...we tell our family that we don't have money for a bunch of gifts, set a STRICT budget and look for fantastic deals or places where we know employees.  A lot of stores are having "Friends and Family" nights where you can take advantage of their employee discount and sometimes get a little extra on top of that.  Danny and I both have retail jobs so you can bet your two cents that a lot of our family members are getting gifts from our workplaces!  But the most important (and hardest) step of the whole process is telling people that we just don't have a bunch of money this year.  Finances are like America's dirty little secret...everybody knows everybody's broke but nobody talks about it.  We all kinda pretend that it's "that guy" who can't pay his bills and oh aren't we glad we aren't "them".  Well this year we are proclaiming ourselves "that guy".  That's right.  We don't have money for extravagent gifts.  Oh who are we kidding...we don't even have the money for normal gifts!!!  Yeah!  You heard/read me!  Our gifts will be small, singular and most likely in the category of "necessities" as spending money on silly trinkets nobody will use is not going to work for us this year.  Nice socks?  Sure.  Gloves?  Why not?  Framed pictures taken by Danny?  Heck yes!  I could just say that the holidays have become the embarassing symbol of modern consumerism and we should boycott spending altogether and it's all about family and fight the power and big brother and hallmark holiday and blahblahblah but c'mon...that's no fun and completely unrealistic.  As IF America would just stop buying presents altogher...ha!  I firmly believe in gift giving and by golly I am going to get my loved ones SOMETHING this year!!!  It will just be a small something...a small, carefully selected something...most likely in the category of sporting goods (my retail) or skating (Danny's retail)...and I'm ok with that!  :)

  ~Julia~