Day Eight: Start Preparing Now for Next Year's Holiday Shopping Madness

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Now that the holiday shopping season is winding down for this year, it’s time to start thinking about next year.

Here are a few tips to help you get a jumpstart on a debt-free 2008 holiday shopping extravaganza.

Start Saving Early

Well, duh.

Yes, we know, we know, that is so common sense.

But for some reason, common sense and reason seem to fly out the door every holiday shopping season, and at one time or another, we all have sounded like the old Alka-Seltzer commercials: I can’t believe I blew the whole budget.

Many of us are surprised year after year at how hard the holidays hit our wallets.

We know they’re coming. They happen every year the same time of year. We can’t run from them.

We make our lists. We check them twice. And then we find out it’s us who are naughty, not nice, to our budgets.
So let’s start thinking this year about saving up for next year.

Sometimes simple things take awhile to sink in, at least into the thick skulls we have here, but it’s finally starting to sink in that by saving up for the holidays, we’re a lot more likely to stay out of debt.

Often it’s the simple things that have the biggest positive impact on our finances. Next year’s holidays are a year away: Let’s start saving now.

Create a budget of how much you will spend

Why is it that every January, after the holidays, most people look at huge credit card bills and wonder: “Where did all that money go?”

This is no different than any other area of our lives: If we don’t put a leash on things, things will get out of control.

Think of your money like your neighbor’s dog.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, your neighbor thinks he has his dog under control.

But every time he has the dog in the front yard it runs over and jumps on you.

And why does this always happen when you’re heading out to the dance club and you have on your favorite, white John Travolta “Saturday Night Fever” disco suit on? It never fails.

Your neighbor thinks he has control of his dog, but if he really did have Cujo under control, we know he wouldn’t let it jump on you when you are off to dance the night away.
Of course, you probably are not going to tell your neighbor that his dog behaves terribly, just as my banker nor my credit card issuer will tell me I have no control over my spending habits.

To have control over your money you have to monitor your spending habits. A budget will do that for you.

I started doing this a few years ago, after I realized just how out of control my holiday spending was getting.

I sat down and made a list of everyone I was going to buy a gift for that year. I used an Excel spreadsheet to calculate just how much I was going to spend on each person, and then totaled it up. I took this total figure and worked backwards from December to see how much I would have to save each week. This sobering thought helped me get motivated to start saving early.

Stick to your budget

Seriously, if you didn’t plan on sticking to it, why create it in the first place, right?

If you decided to spend $20 on your aunt Dorothy, then stick to your guns and don’t buy her that $50 set of flannel pajamas with the booties.

Don’t get me wrong, it is most definitely better to give than to receive, but if you keep on giving, you’re going to be receiving huge credit cards in the mail.

Be honest with yourself about what you can spend. Trying to spend $100 on each person’s gift when you can only afford $10 is only going to hurt you in the long run.

Don’t get caught up in the “keeping-up-with-the-Joneses” disease. Most people would prefer you give from your heart, not from the compulsion to spend huge amounts of money that you do not have, just to impress them.