Christmas Cash

Today I was inspired by this post by Joe Sangl regarding Christmas spending.

We are only 70 days from Christmas!  This is a KNOWN, UPCOMING EXPENSE.  Ignoring known, upcoming expenses is one of the number one reasons that budgets fail.

You have 70 days until Christmas, but really probably only 40 or so to save for it.  Have you committed to pay cash for Christmas this year?

If you have saved nothing for Christmas so far, what steps are you going to take to avoid debt?

Melissa & I have benefited from some personal discipline & some good fortune in the fact that we’ve never taken on any debt at Christmas.  How?  Well, we only pay for what we can afford and we never go “crazy” with Christmas gifts.  Our girls get “3 big gifts” for Christmas because that’s what Jesus got.

Buying gifts isn’t the only thing that we put money towards each year.  We also give.  We make it a priority to give our largest gift to Christ each year. I wonder what it communicates to Jesus when we take out a loan to buy video games for our kids, yet we don’t give Him anything?  Better yet, I wonder what that communicates to our kids?  Hmmmm……

How do we do this? We receive a Christmas Offering each year at the Creek.  Melissa & I don’t diversify our Holiday giving…we give it ALL to this offering.  We set some money aside for this, but we usually up that somehow because we feel like we should.  So before you make your shopping list this year, make your budget.  Pre-decide how much you’ll spend & how much you’ll give.  Before Black Friday hits, before you go shopping, before you feel the pressure…decide.