The Easy Way To Save For Christmas!

Obviously Christmas is upon us and we know that many people often times spend lots of money around this time of year and I wanted to give you a glimpse of how I save some money to spend at Christmas time.

I know this is going to look and sound simple because it is. It's a Christmas jar! Here's mine...

And then there are rules that you have to stick to if you want to have money to spend!



Christmas Jar Rules:
1. For those of you who never have cash on hand, you need to make an effort to withdraw some cash every month. (i.e. you can't put cash in a jar, if you don't ever have cash on hand.) But in the heart of being good stewards of your finances, only take a small amount with the intention of using it for something you would normally buy with your debit card. So if you always buy your lunch with debit and you always spend around $5 a day, then take enough cash out for $6 a day.

2. Any change or dollars that you had set aside for lunch (or whatever) that was not used goes into the jar.

3. Any change or dollars that are found in the laundry automatically go in the jar.

4. Any change or dollars left lying around anywhere in the house go in the jar.

And the most important rule:
5. NEVER take money out of the jar until you are ready to buy Christmas presents.

A couple of weeks ago I emptied my jar. I had a ton of change and quite a few dollar bills. Overall I had saved over $150. Who knew that my little glass jar by the sink could hold so much?!
Since we try to stay within a certain budget, nearly 1/3 of my Christmas was purchased with the dollars and change I had saved.

I know some people will cringe thinking about it: I took my bag full of change and dollars to Wal-Mart and used part of it to check out. I stacked up $14 in quarters alone. Does that seem embarrassing to you? If so, why? Does it matter what the people behind you in the store think about how you pay for your purchases? Does it matter what the checkout person thinks? I'll tell you what mattered to me... that I had just bought a large portion of our Christmas gifts and I did not have to swipe my debit card or credit card to do it. It will not come back to bite me in the rear in January when the bank or credit card statements come in. No, instead in January I'll be putting my change and random dollars in the jar for next Christmas.

Now if you are reading this and it's the first week of December and all you could save this way would be a few dollars, it's not going to be as helpful as this advice: A couple of weeks ago I heard a lady on the radio say that if you need money fast, the best way to free up some cash is to eat the food in the back of the pantry and the bottom of the deep freezer. She said, "so you may have to eat a few weird meals that normally wouldn't go together, but if you can do that for 1 week, you can likely save over $100 that you would have otherwise spent at the store." I totally agree!

Now a rant and rave about Christmas spending:
Christmas has become so commercialized that we've forgotten that the season is truly about giving. God gave Christ for us on Christmas! I don't want my children to grow up thinking the best thing about Christmas is presents. It's not. We are fortunate and blessed to live in a country where we live in abundance every day. We have food to eat, clothes to wear and a nice home to live in.

I heard on television that some families in the US will spend over $700 (I think they said per person - I hope they said per family) on gifts. We spend approximately $450 for Christmas shopping. That includes gifts for our two boys, a little something for ourselves, our parents, nieces, nephews and close friends. How do we do it? Our boys get 3 gifts at Christmas. That's all that Jesus Christ was given. We are not extravagant but instead are thoughtful with our gifts. A small thoughtful gift can be as meaningful as a costly gift. Sometimes during the year I'll jot down ideas of Christmas gifts to give family and friends if we've talked about a certain subject, book, etc so that even if Christmas is 6 months later, it shows that their gift was bought with thought and consideration. We also shop during sales. That's it!

Consider your thoughts and motives at Christmas. Is the debt that you may be incurring truly worth it? By spending more on our children than what we have are we not teaching them that "joy" comes from materialistic things? Find joy in the joy-giver. Find peace in life not in things. Share and be grateful.