Create a Holiday Budget with Intention | Tips from Pennywise Coaching

Hey Wise Guys, it's Penny with Penny Wise Coaching. If you've been following me at all, you know that I use the term Wise Guys lovingly to describe those who are along this journey with me to be wise with our money and improve our finances. This is a conversation that we're going to have today about holidays and holiday spending. So the best time of year to start planning for Christmas or Hanukkah is in January. The next best time is right now. So whenever you're watching this, I hope you will take some time to start thinking about your plans for the holidays. And what you want them to look like, and more importantly, how much you're going to spend on them. The vast majority of people are not doing a plan. They're just moving along with whatever feels good to them. And there's statistics out there that every year they run up and say, what is the average person spending? Well, the most recent stat I could find said that the average American was spending about $1,000 on holiday trending. And then I read another thing that said over 44% were carrying $1,200 of debt into the new year. So my hope for you as a wise guy is that you will take some time with me today to think about your plans for whatever you celebrate so that you actually experience joy and peace in that time and not the stress and anxiety that follows. So maybe you shop all year, or maybe you're one of those people who shops the day before Christmas. Either way, having a plan is going to help you stay in control and decide when and how much you're going to spend. So if I can encourage you to think ahead and plan now so that your holidays are paid for and they don't follow you into the next year and that they align with your other goals for your year. You know, this is one month out of the year and one holiday, and yet sometimes people are not planning for retirement and they're spending thousands of dollars on Christmas. I think one of the other things that I find fascinating, that this is a time of year when people are buying for themselves. It's really not just about buying for others because we're so heavily marketed to, and the businesses that the stores are putting everything on sale, and this is their big time of year and a crunch for them to make up for loss all year long. So of course things are going to be in a great price. So if you're planning to spend, whether it's on somebody else or on yourself, set aside some money out of every check from now until the holiday season when you, when you start spending money. I encourage people to pull it out in cash because cash has a real visceral feeling to it when you spend it, and you can know when it's going to be gone. You also need to start making lists of who all you're going to buy for, what kind of things are going to come up. And we're going to talk about some of the places where, where we spend money over the holidays, and you may not even be remembering that. First of all, think about how many people do you buy for. And you have to start including things like school teachers or co-workers or service providers that you're buying a little something for, because all of that adds up into your expenses in that month. Um, places that you might be spending money that you haven't even thought about yet might be decorations cards, um, postage. Do people still send Christmas cards? I get a few every year, but that's definitely used to be a huge part of our budget. Food— there's additional food. You're going to parties, you're having a big dinner, you're baking or doing things that maybe you wouldn't do the rest of the year. So those are going to add up to your costs over the holidays. So don't forget to factor that in—wrapping paper, things like that. So I have a whole downloadable budget sheet that you can get and, and has tons of tips, way more than I'm going to put in this video, but ideas of things that you might have forgotten. One of the things that you might think about is, do you really have to buy a present for everyone? This was a tough conversation for my husband and I for probably more than one year. As we tried to merge our backgrounds and what's important to us, what our values were, and when we started trying to get out of debt, this became one of those areas where I could see that, you know, we were spending a ton of money on all kinds of people that maybe they felt the obligation to reciprocate, when if we would just have a conversation and, and talk about these things with people, maybe we didn't really need to buy everybody a gift. There's a great book out there called The Five Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman, and I highly recommend that you Google that and take the little quiz that's online. It's really interesting to start answering some questions about how you feel love and how you express love. And I'm just going to go over those real quick here for you today. But the one of them obviously is gifts. Lots of people feel really celebrated when they get a gift, and they, they want to buy other people gifts. But there are 5 other— or 4 other ways that you might be feeling just as much love. So the second one is quality time. Maybe just spending time with somebody this holiday is what's going to be important to them. I know as I've aged, things matter less to me, and time and experiences are much more important. So I would rather have somebody sit down and visit with me or meet me for lunch than buy me a present. Quality time is a second one. Third one is acts of service. So this one would be more like doing the laundry. I feel more love because my husband took over the laundry years ago than I do when I get a gift. Now don't get me wrong, I love the presents that he's given me. However, on a daily basis, when somebody's doing something for me, I feel a real tangible kind of sense of love and appreciation. Number 4 is words of affirmation. Maybe you're the kind of person who never gets off of a phone call without saying, "I love you," and gets upset if somebody didn't say that in return or has had a harsh word with you. So words of affirmation strike people differently, but some people, that's really all they care about is for you to write a nice letter or tell them how much you appreciate them. And the 5th one is touch. Physical touch. It, it could be in the romantic sense, but it's also things like a hug or holding hands or pat on the back. And that's really shows somebody else that they care about them. So check out that book, take a look at it, see if it resonates with you. Start having the conversation with people that you care about about, is it maybe time that we don't have to exchange gifts anymore? Will you be offended if I don't buy you a present? Does it make a lot of sense for us to ship presents back and forth? Um, I know my brother and I got to the point where we only exchanged gifts the years that we were together, and then as the kids got older, then it became like less important about the gifts, just more about being time together. So it might feel awkward at first, but have that conversation, because I have found in my life that when I've had that conversation, the other person actually felt some relief that they didn't have to buy me a present anymore. So as we get older and start thinking about— and, you know, no matter what age you are, someday you're going to want to quit working. Someday you're going to want to have some kind of different lifestyle, potentially. So are you robbing your future today because of all the little choices that you're making? I always tell my clients that it's kind of death by a thousand cuts. It really is about the little things that we're going to do that are going to make a difference. And this isn't necessarily a little part of your budget for the year. I highly recommend that you start today putting aside some money from every check and deciding specifically how much your budget is for Christmas. And if you download the, the tool that I have that we'll be sharing here, you'll be able to see that there's lots of places you can cut and lots of places that are really valuable to you. But if, if you'll stop to think, I only have this much money, where do I want to spend it, and how long does it going to take me to get to that? It's a whole lot easier to budget for Christmas time in January than it is in September. However, whatever time of year it is that you're watching this video, today is the, the farthest out that you can start, right, if you haven't already. So start thinking in terms of I better set aside X number of dollars out of every paycheck so that this doesn't go on a credit card. Now I get that there's some, you know, hacks and things that, that don't necessarily make sense, and you don't quite understand how this would work. I hope that you would reach out to me if you have any questions about that, or if you're looking for a way to up your level all year long and to really improve your finances so that this can be a joyful experience, not a stressful time of year. So thanks for taking the time to watch this today. Please share it with a friend if it was valuable to you, and reach out to me or follow me, um, on my social media channels and join my email list so that you can get tips all year long to help you improve your finances. In the meantime, be wise.