by Tricia
We deviated from our normal family Christmas, and instead of making dinner at home we ventured out and had dinner at a friend’s house. While it was nice, and we appreciated being invited, I think next year we are going back to making our own Christmas dinner. We usually have ham and homemade cheesy potatoes, and I still find myself hungering for that meal.
Anyways, since this is a personal finance blog, I should divulge that we totally blew our budget for Christmas. We thought we’d spend about $150 on our son, but it ended up being more. The most expensive gift we purchased was $35, but by the time you add up all of the stocking stuffers and batteries (oh, my…those batteries), it quickly became a lot more.
I do not have the official numbers yet, because I am still waiting to receive my husband’s receipts. But, I know it is close to $250.
Overall, the total for all Christmas gift spending is more than $500. I’m thinking it will easily be around $600 total this year when everything is entered. Thank goodness we received a total of $350 in Christmas bonuses. That helped tremendously.
This is the first Christmas that we’ve had since embarking on this debt reduction journey, and I really thought we would have done better than we did with our spending. I will have to spend some time looking at where we went wrong.