Five Easy Steps for Holiday Budgeting, Plus My FREE Holiday Shopping Helper Spreadsheet
I will be the first person to admit that sticking to a budget over the holiday season is tough. I get so caught up in the fun of the season that I want to bake every cookie, buy every present, attend every party, and decorate every inch of my house. I love the holidays, but they can exhaust my body, my emotions, and my wallet. Here are five easy steps, plus my super secret, never before shared holiday shopping spreadsheet, to help you stay on track this holiday season.
Make a Budget - Sticking to a budget starts with the obvious - making a budget! Take the time to think about how much you can afford to spend over the holidays. If you start early enough in the year, set aside a little bit of money each month so that when the holiday season hits, your credit card won’t take the bulk of the pain.
Don’t Forget the Small Stuff - Making a budget for gifts is fairly easy, but don’t forget all of the other expenses that will dent your budget. Do your icicle lights need to be replaced? Does your wrapping paper/ribbon inventory need to be updated? Don’t forget the cost of the tree and any new ornaments you will want to add. Include in your budget any donations you will be making, hostess gifts you’ll need for parties, and any food you will need to purchase for hosting your own holiday events.
Trim the Fat - It’s so, SO easy to go overboard during the holidays. I get overwhelmed by the season and want to buy gifts for everyone I know, bake cookies for anyone I’ve ever met, and deck my house from top to bottom with lights, garland, and bows. Resist the temptation to overdo it, and trim your list back as much as possible. Instead of buying gifts for family friends, plan a lunch date or fun outing. For friends with kids, offer to spend a night babysitting so that they can have a date night. Pinterest is full of great ideas for homemade gifts - a good friend once gave me a bottle of homemade vanilla extract, which I thought was one of the greatest gift ideas I’d ever seen.
Stick to the List - This is especially difficult to do if you knock off your holiday shopping early - everything is bought, but there are still two weeks until Christmas, and every day you see cool gift ideas pop up in your Facebook feed, or you are drawn in by clever holiday window displays as you are walking downtown. Avoid the temptation to keep adding “just one more thing.” This is even more of a danger zone if you have kids - if you find one extra gift that you just have to buy for your son, you will then realize that you need to come up with one more for your daughter, because god forbid the little angels wake up Christmas morning and don’t have the EXACT same number of gifts under the tree. My husband and I have definitely found ourselves buying absolute junk at the last minute to make sure that the gift count is even, and every time we do it I regret getting ourselves into that situation.
Keep Track of Your Spending - There’s no point in making a budget if you aren’t going to keep track of how you are doing. Make sure to save your receipts - it’s best to keep them all in an envelope or folder - so you can add them up and see how you are tracking against your budget. I group my spending into three categories - Gifts, Food, and Extras. Extras would include things like a tree, wrapping paper, or extra lights. You can keep a simple handwritten list of everything, but I have found it helpful to keep a spreadsheet to track all of my holiday expenses. In fact, I am happy to share my spreadsheet with you. I have updated this year, and I included instructions on the first tab to help you get started. It might look a little over the top - I am a total spreadsheet geek so I tend to take these things a bit too far - but once you start playing around with it I think you’ll find it helpful. It helps you track your actual spending against your budget, and also helps you keep track of where you need to go to shop, and what you have bought, received in the mail, and wrapped. Personally, I like to sort the list a few different ways - by person so that I can see who is getting what, by location and store so that I can better organize shopping trips, and by what still needs to be bought so that I can focus on the unfinished parts of my list.
So for the first time ever, here’s a link to my super secret, over-the-top, don’t miss a detail, FREE Holiday Shopping Helper spreadsheet! I promise it’s really free, I won’t even ask for your email. I just love my spreadsheet and want to share it with the world. Just follow the link to google sheets and download the spreadsheet to your preferred format. If you decide to use it, I’d love to hear comments on how it worked for you.
One more thing - this isn’t a tip on how to budget, but I’d like to remind everyone to give back this holiday season, if possible. There are lots of people out there who are feeling a lot of holiday stress, and there are lots of children who won’t be finding much under the tree this year. Find a local non-profit and donate what you can, whether that is time, money, or items. Two of my favorites here in Hood River are the Hood River County Christmas Project and the Hood River Warming Shelter. If taking on the responsibility to sponsor a family seems like too much, team up with friends and sponsor a family together. Anything you can do will help.