Tis the Season

Tis the season to over eat candies and cookies. Tis the season to buy lots of toys that our kids will break or never play with. Tis the season to buy ugly sweaters and useless gadgets for friends and family. Tis the season to return the gifts you didn't want and try to find something useful. Ever feel like that? It's so easy to get sucked into all the deals and hype of Christmas and forget what the true meaning of Christmas is all about.

Our first year as parents was the year that my husband had been laid off. He had yet to find another engineering job, and was working through a temp agency to make ends meet. (Well, get closer to meeting!) We had cut EVERYTHING out of our budget, except house payment, car insurance, and utilities. We cut our food budget to under $100/month. And those were our expenses. There was absolutely nothing left over for anything else. In fact, we had to utilize some of our savings during that time to cover even those monthly expenses. So, what did we do for Christmas?

Nothing. No one got any presents. We told family that we usually bought for not to expect anything. Our son was a mere nine months old, so he wasn't expecting anything, either. We did purchase a small tree and had a hand full of ornaments that we had stored from the previous year. That year, Christmas was all about being together, without the expectation of buying gifts for anyone, without the greed that comes from a pile of presents with your name on it.

The following year, we had two young sons (ages 20 mos and 3 mos). We knew it was time to start developing our own family traditions, and we wanted to include gifts in that, but money was still tight. We decided to only do stockings as a family. Mostly filled with items from the dollar store. For our relatives, we had a minimal budget, and told them not to expect much. Again, Christmas was about being together as a family, reading about the birth of Christ, and the joy of having a couple of small items to pull out of a stocking.

Fast forward a few years to the present Christmas. Now, we aren't wealthy by any means, but we have the money to do as much or as little as we choose. And we choose to continue in our tradition of minimal gifts at Christmas. We still primarily focus on the stockings. It's fun to take the kids to the dollar store to pick out items for each other. Play dough, small plastic toys, hair accessories, water colors, activity books...so many things to choose from! We have also added one present under the tree for each child. We have a budget for these items, and the gifts we buy for friends and family, and we stick to it. (We use an envelope method for our Christmas purchases, that I talked about in a previous post.)

On Christmas Eve, we gather near the tree and read the story of Jesus' birth from Luke 2. We have something hands-on to help the kids visualize the story- small items representing different aspects of the story or a nativity set that they can manipulate. We thank God for the birth of his Son, and what He did for us on the cross when He grew up. We do gifts then, but because there's only one present, it's not consuming our evening. The time is centered around the Lord and being together as a family.

Last year we started a tradition of having a family Advent wreath. Each Sunday we light one new candle and talk about what that candle represents. On Christmas Eve, all five candles are lit and we celebrate the birth of our Savior. At times, we have also had a birthday cake for Jesus with the decorations representing different aspects of the Gospel.

I highly recommend "the ADVENTure of Christmas" by Lisa Whelchel as a way of bringing Christ into the things that you do this holiday season. Everything from the Christmas tree, to writing cards, to wrapping the presents is given a significance and can strengthen our faith in the Lord.

What do you do during Advent or Christmas to center the time around Christ's birth? How do you handle all the hype around presents? For other ideas on a budget, check out Frugal Fridays.

Envelopes Make It All Work

Let's pretend that you've sat down and figured out how much you have to spend on various things each month. You go through a month or two and tally your receipts, only to find that you've over spent in a couple of categories. Month after month. "This budget thing isn't working" you think. But really it's not that the budget isn't working, but you haven't found a system to make it work for you.

I struggled with this for a couple of years. I diligently kept track of my expenses at the grocery store, but each month that last bill bumped me up over what we had agreed to spend. We tried increasing my budget- only to go over that one, too! We heard about the envelope system, so I gave it a try, and we found that it really, truly works! Dave Ramsey is a strong advocate of this method, as well.

We actually use one of those "coupon organizers" you can find for $1 at Target or a dollar store. Each month, I take the cash for our cash expenses (groceries, date night, etc), and put them each into it's folder. Once it's gone, it's gone. We can take the money out of another folder to cover an overage, but it doesn't get replaced until the new month begins. The cash that we start out with is all that's alloted, and we don't withdraw more. There's no more budget overages with this system!

Some people use this system and have it broken into a weekly or bi-monthly budget so they're not carrying around huge amounts of cash. Often, I'll take the money out of the folder at home that will cover the cost of my list, plus a little more if I stumble across a good deal. This is another way to prevent me from going over budget, or purchasing items we don't really need. And I'm not carrying a month's worth of cash around the store!

If you struggle with staying within your budget guidelines, give this method a try. We've done some tweaking over the years, adding or changing categories and adjusting how much goes into each folder. It's not static, so it may take a couple of months to get it all working for you. But the simplicity of it makes it an incredibly useful tool for managing your cash expenses.

It works for me! What works for you?

For more helpful tips on a variety of topics check out We Are THAT Family.
Also linked to Thrifty Thursday- check it out for more stories of using cash envelopes.

Live Within Your Means

Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.' ~Luke 14:28-30

Whether you make $1000/month or $10,000/month, everybody wants more. We think, "if only we had an extra $xxx each month, we'd be fine." But it never works that way. Whatever your income, you need to make a budget for that amount- and then stick to it. It doesn't matter how your money is allocated, it matters that your expenses are less than your income.

My husband loves excel spreadsheets. He developed one for our budget and we track all of our monthly expenses. (A program like Microsoft Money does the same thing.) I recently looked back at what was included in that budget those years right after the layoff. Here were our line items: tithe, house, food, electricity, water, gas, phone, garbage, car insurance, vehicle (gas), school loans. I'm not going to include how much was budgeted for each item, because that would be too shocking for you. There weren't any new clothes, no babysitter, no dinner out, no cell phone, no internet, no movies, no gifts, no extras of any sort at all. We did not use credit cards, and were continuing to pay down our debt. We continued to tithe, but did have to give up our extra giving.

Slowly, as my husband recieved raises and bonuses, we added some of those extras to our list, but still not at a very high dollar amount. Some of those categories need to build up over the course of a couple of months before some purchases. Clothing, for example, is only budgeted at $25/month. What if we need new shoes? We save up in that envelope. I'll write more about envelopes later.

If you need a jumpstart on budgeting. There are many resources out there to help you out. We were doing pretty well on our own, but Dave Ramsey's materials helped us fine tune our system. I've also heard many good things about Crown's resources. Better Budgeting has some resources I've also found helpful.

So, cut those credit cards up, budget your monthly expenses, and save up for the things you want the most. You'll be glad you did.