Christmas is here again- I love this time of year. I try to keep my focus on the reason for the season-it is easy to get into the materialism thing with the ads-Black Friday/Cyber Monday hype.
Today my focus is getting my Christmas tree up with minimal stress/foul language. We still buy a real tree every year-found a good buy at Home Depot yesterday-and the sales person even trimmed the bottom limbs and cut off the bottom of the tree for me. I usually cut it two or three times till I get a flat cut, that will stand up in the tree stand-I will let you know how she did with that small electric chain saw-looked flat to me.
I am using a budget I found at HomeEverAfter.com for our Christmas list this year. We have in the past just used a list with numbers by names, but I am trying this spreadsheet this year. It needed a few tweaks but so far seems are working just fine. I will let you know how well we do in staying within the limits we have self-imposed. I am not a spread sheet geek, can barely find my way around them. Fortunately for me I have a CPA for a brother and a son-so my spreadsheet questions are answered pretty quickly, except at tax season, when they will disappear for a couple of months.
Check out these earlier posts if you missed them about budget busters and this one about ways to decrease stress around the holidays to make sure you keep in mind the reason for the season.
And remember, that any overspending you do this month, will come back to haunt you with a vengeance in January, so be careful out there.
If you hear someone yelling today/ignore me-it’s just me fighting with the Christmas tree.
Tags: budget busters, Christmas list, overspending at the holidays
