Was holiday gift giving a disaster last year? Did your Christmas giving go way over what you initially budgeted? Maybe it was as simple as looking in the eyes of your adorable kids and your loving spouse and you just couldn’t say “no.”
Months later you’re still dealing with the aftermath of your Christmas giving and by the time you finished paying off Christmas 2014, Christmas 2015 is just around the corner.
Avoid Christmas debt
Every time you look at your credit card statement you see that you’re still paying off your daughter’s Tickle Me Elmo. The question now becomes how do you manage your 2015 gift giving so that it doesn’t linger into 2016?
You have to actively manage your family’s holiday expectations. There are a number of ways to do this without killing the holiday spirit. How to do this? Here are three pain-free ways to manage your family’s holiday expectations:
- Schedule a family meeting and discuss what you would like the holiday to be like. Talk to your loved ones about what is important to you in terms of what you would like to experience during the holiday. Would you like lots of little gifts, one big gift, a dinner party, or a trip.
- Talk about gift giving price limits, events you would like to attend, should everyone give one gift or three, white elephant gifts, or homemade? Having a half an hour conversation will create clear expectations and eliminate any negative surprises.
- Talk to your friends about your expectations for the holidays. They will most likely embrace anything that allows them to save money — but still have a lot of fun. Suggest alternatives to what you normally do. If you exchange purchased gifts suggest a gift-giving alternative or host a themed pot-luck.
- Set family goals and be clear about the role your holiday related savings plays in the bigger picture. If it’s not clear why you’re making these changes then it will be difficult for your family to buy into the idea.
Communicate Christmas expectations
The key to managing your family and friends’ gift giving expectations is to communicate. People aren’t mind readers and need a certain amount of guidance and reassurance about a change from the normal status quo.
Remember that it’s an ongoing process. Some of your family members will be resistant to the changes if at least the majority of your family is onboard it’s still a positive situation.
Remember that practice makes perfect. After Christmas talk to your family and friends to see what they like and disliked about how you celebrated the holidays. What would they change and how? Were they surprised by the outcome?
Finally, spend some time looking at your budget. Did you save money? Where were your highest levels of savings experienced? Was it food and alcohol because you had a budget? Or, was it in the gift category? How would you adjust your budget so that next year you can experience an even higher level of savings?
Taking time to ask these questions and examine your results will help you have a fun and relatively stress free holiday season.
This post on Christmas gift expectations was written by Michelle Jackson, a personal finance and lifestyle blogger sharing her story at The Shop My Closet Project. Her goal is to help people cultivate their best life. When she’s not blogging or podcasting for Girl Gone Frugal you can find her riding her bike, going for coffee, or hiking in the mountains.
I know a lot of families who got on board with secret santas and white elephant exchanges instead of buying presents for everyone. It’s fun and so much cheaper!
For adults, I think Secret Santas are almost as fun as real Santa as a child. I also like white elephant exchanges, which can come in handy for family birthdays too.
We will have exchange gifts and made our wishlist of 5 things. This is to give him/her options which one of those he/she prefers to give. I think this is easy and communicate expectations.