by Tricia
We had an ambitious budget of $150 for Christmas this year. In early December, it became clear that we were going to go over that budget. Either unexpected things came up or I forget about people to buy for. I am not the best budgeter in the world, that’s for sure.
I tallied up our Christmas spending, and it came to $250. We were $100 over budget. For clarification, that spending does not include any gifts purchased from gift money received. The spending there is the money we spent out of pocket for gifts. Even though we went over, I think we did pretty well. Putting more thought into gifts paid off, especially with our son. We bought him educational toys and he loves them! Mom and dad love playing with them too!
All in all, Christmas was very practical this year and our family is set now with proper winter gear to handle our cold winters. Our son is always set, but mom and dad are now set too. It’s time to get outside more and do some family snowshoeing. We are excited about that. Now we need a nice winter day where we are all off work/school! That is one downfall of having both my husband and I working. All three of us rarely have a day off together now. We are working on that, though.
As for the blown budget, I plan on trying to sell a few more things and spending less money in January to make up for it. It looks like both my husband and I are going to give up soft drinks (again) for health reasons as part of our New Year’s resolutions. That will easily save over $50/month right there. Yes, we like our soda (caffeine!). There are other expenses we are talking about too, but we haven’t made a decision on yet. Cable is one thing on the chopping block as we speak.
