The holidays are a beautiful, fun, and enjoyable time of the year. Unfortunately, the holiday season can also be an incredibly stressful time of the year for a lot of people. This can be due to a lot of different reasons, but one of the most common reasons for holiday stress is because of financial stress. The holidays can easily get expensive. Halloween comes with the cost of candy and costumes. As Thanksgiving arrives, you have the cost of an expensive bird and all the fixings of a huge feast for your entire extended family. As if this wasn’t enough, Christmas is right around the corner. It’s the season of giving, and your wallet will quickly feel depleted from all of the holiday deals and the desire to buy presents and goodies for all of your loved ones. With this impending financial stress, it can be hard to remember the joy of the holiday.
Start your Christmas shopping early
This may seem a little preemptive. But really, getting your Christmas shopping started as early as possible will help you save money. Instead of spending all of your money the few weeks before Christmas to buy gifts, you can get started in September and spend a much smaller portion of your paycheck. Even if you end up spending about the same amount of money in the end, it will be a lot easier on you financially, since you won’t have to spend all of it at the same time and put your financial safety in jeopardy.
Consider a potluck Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving doesn’t seem like an expensive holiday at first. There are no presents involved, so you shouldn’t really be spending extra money during the month of November, right? Thanksgiving just requires a little bit extra groceries. It turns out, that “little” bit of extra groceries costs a lot more than you’d expect, just for one family meal. If you have friends and family coming over for the meal, see if you can implement some sort of a potluck policy to help you cut costs. Even if it’s a matter of not having to provide pies or dinner rolls, you’ll end up saving money. You could even set up a “bird fund”, where everyone coming to the dinner can pitch in a few dollars to go towards the cost of the turkey, since that’s generally the most expensive part of the meal.