Christmas.

 Let's talk about Christmas today! I'm one of the most annoying people when it comes to Christmas. I LOVE THIS HOLIDAY! Although Halloween is my favorite, Christmas is just the most heartwarming time of year in my opinion. I love how the world becomes a bit more magical, the food more comforting, and people a lot more kind. You're probably thinking, "Chloe, it's August. We're 4 months away from Christmas!" Uh, yeah. That's why we need to talk about it.

Our first Christmas as a married couple, we kind of went overboard at the last minute. We were just so excited that we couldn't help but buy a bunch of stuff for each other! I don't remember exactly how much my husband and I spent, but it was definitely way outside of our budget. This will our 5th Christmas together and I think we finally have a good system figured out!

We have two children and need to buy for them, plus our parents, my siblings, my mom's brother's and my younger cousin. This is who we typically spend the holidays with. So we have 12 people, not including each other! I definitely don't want to be caught in December trying to buy for a baker's dozen of people; plus I have a weird fear of being late for anything. So we start early with the Christmas shopping.

Doing this helps in several ways:

• We aren't spending all of our money all at once.
• It's more budget friendly as we can spread the spending over several months.
• We can shop end of season/pre-season and score some awesome deals.
• When December rolls around, we won't be stressed as much.

With all this in mind, we do have to set a limit. We decided to spend no more that $25 on each of our family members, $100 for each of our kids, and $75 on each other. So in all, we will have a budget of $600 for Christmas. Yeah, that's a lot. Definitely would not want to spend that all in one month. So we start buying in August, getting a few things here and there. I'm happy to say that I bought two gifts today and spent under $20 on each (thank you Amazon.com)!

Something else that is handy is that I have been saving up for Amazon.com rewards all year via various rewards apps and our Amazon credit card. So although we have a $600 budget, we definitely won't be spending that much from our own pockets. Another win!

So if you see me out and about, buying weird stuff, just know that I am preparing for Christmas. I would love to hear some of your budgeting/money saving tips for holidays! If you have something cool to share with the class, let me know in the comments!


--chloe.