Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

A Two-Step Approach to Preparing Kids for a Giving Holiday: Part One

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While you may not want to think about it yet, the holidays are right around the corner.  The commercial machine is cranking into gear.  My local Costco already has rows upon rows of Christmas presents for kids and Christmas trees and wrapping paper. . .Soon, there will be endless Christmas ads on television for all the latest toys and electronics your kids will beg for.

Each year, Christmas seems to become more and more about spending money and over consuming.  If you’ve come to dread the holiday season and the gimmes that come with it, now is the time to plan a different type of holiday.  Now is the time to plan a giving holiday.  Make a plan now, before the holiday is in full swing.

You can take a two part approach to this.  Part one is to allow your children to have an opportunity to give.  Part two is to reduce your child’s expectations for the gifts they will receive at Christmas.

Preparing Kids for a Giving HolidayToday, we’ll be talking about part one.

Strategies to Allow Your Children to Give at Christmas

While it’s nice to get things for Christmas, giving is also nice.  Well before Christmas starts, sit down with your kids (if they are old enough) and discuss how you’d like to give of your time.  If they’re still young, say under 5, you can just start a new tradition of giving of yourselves during the holidays.  You’ll experience very little resistance from the little ones.

Put in time.  One way to give, especially if you’re on a tight budget, is to give of your time.  You could volunteer to work in a soup kitchen or to help assemble thanksgiving meal baskets at your local church.  You could go through your closets and donate excess clothes or other items.

Give your money.  If you have more money than time, you can give your money to help make the holidays better for another family.  You could pick a name from a giving tree that pops up in December.  (The post office often has one as does Whole Foods and other grocery stores.)  Take your child with you to buy a present for the child in need.

Or, you could donate to a charitable organization like World Vision.  Look through the catalog and either choose to sponsor a child or to make a one-time contribution.  Let your child know how the money will be used and help him to realize how much more he has than the family of the child who will be receiving the money.

Another organization, Samaritan’s Purse, has a giving project, Operation Christmas Child.  You fill a shoebox with simple toys and school materials for a needy child.  This is a nice project to do with your children, and you can give without spending a lot of money, if your money is tight.

If you want to get away from the consumer driven holiday season, know that you CAN have a different kind of holiday this year.  However, you’ll need to start now and take the first step–teaching your children the importance of giving at the holidays.  Next time we’ll talk about the next step, adjusting expectations.

What’s your favorite way to teach your kids the importance of giving during the holidays?

Original photo credit: Theresa Thompson, on Flickr

What Christmas Expectations Are You Setting for Your Children?

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What are your children’s expectations for Christmas presents?  Do they expect many Christmas presents under the tree and their every wish to be met?  Do they expect a modest Christmas?

Believe it or not, the answer to this question doesn’t really depend on your kids; it depends on you.  From the time your children are small, you set their expectations, and what you set by example is what they come to know as “normal” (until they get married and find that their partner has a different “normal” than they do, but that is another post).

If you have small children, think carefully about what expectations you want to give your children.  Yes, retailers would prefer that you shop ’til you drop and give your credit card a work out, but it doesn’t have to be that way.  Here are what some people do who have chosen to have a different Christmas celebration than retailers would prefer you have:

1.  Give some new gifts, some used, and some homemade.

Amy Dacyczyn, the original Frugal Zealot and author of The Tightwad Gazette had six children to buy for.  Each child got one new gift.  Then, they got a few gifts that were used items that she had purchased at garage sales and thrift stores.  She also made her children a few gifts.  If I remember correctly, she spent $50 or under for each child.  (Of course, this was 20 years ago, so accounting for inflation, she spent no more than $82 for each child in 2012 dollars.

While you might balk at the idea of giving garage sale gifts for presents, I can tell you that I followed Dacyczyn’s practices when I had my own kids, and some of our kids’ presents are nice finds that we got at garage sales.  My oldest is 8, and he has yet to complain about it because it is what he expects.  He still does get new presents, but there are used ones in the mix.  (I like the term recycled better, though.)

2.  Give a charitable donation instead of gifts.

Ann Voskamp, the blogger behind A Holy Experience, recounts that one Christmas Eve 10 years ago, her son asked her, “Why don’t we give up things so we can give to Jesus for his birthday?”  The question radically changed Voskamp’s way of thinking, and from that year on, her family has foregone giving Christmas gifts to one another.  Instead, each day during Advent they make a charitable donation using the money they would have spent on gifts.

This is a radical idea, to be sure, but it is the norm now for her family.

3.  Only give 3 gifts.

Another idea based in Christian roots is to only give your children three gifts.  Some do this because the Wise Men brought Jesus 3 gifts.  Others take a spin on this and give their children three gifts–something they want, something they need, and something they can experience.

4.  Meet needs as gifts.

Gifts don’t have to be all luxuries and things you want.  When I was growing up, my parents’ money was extremely tight.  I got some new clothes during the back to school season, but my winter clothes and sometimes even my uniform clothing or new backpack were all given as Christmas presents.  I was always excited to get these things and never felt deprived.  My mom told me a few years ago that she had to give gifts this way because money was so tight, but I never knew.  This practice was normal for me.

Christmas gift giving was not always the extravaganza it is now.  As an adult, I reread the Little House in the Prairie books, and I was struck by how happy Laura was to get her very own handmade tin cup and an orange for Christmas one year.

If you are a parent of small children, you can start your Christmas gift giving traditions now, and they don’t have to involve credit card debt you can’t pay off until March or April.

What is your favorite way to give gifts at Christmas?

img credit: South Granville Live on Flickr

Have a Holiday Spending Plan: Don’t Dread January

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Its beginning to feel a lot like christmasHoliday shopping is in full swing now, and you may be feeling the financial pressure.  Shane recently quit his job and is working on a tight holiday budget.  My husband and I are in the midst of being gazelle intense, so we don’t have much extra money for gifts.  Yet even though we don’t have much money to spend this holiday season, I feel great about what we are giving because we are not overspending.  We can truly afford what we are giving.  Instead of overspending, we are empowering ourselves by spending exactly what we are able to spend.  Follow these tips to rein in your holiday purchases this season:

-Freeze the credit cards.

Literally.  Put them in water and freeze them.  Better yet, put them in peanut butter as we did.  Vow not to use your credit cards this month.  There is nothing worse than opening your credit card statement and staring at the large number you now owe.  The presents have been opened, the holiday is over, but you still owe for the holidays.  If, instead, you put the credit cards away, you have nothing to dread come January.

 

 

-Set a budget and fund it with cash.

Determine exactly how much you have to spend and withdraw that money from your bank account.  Pay for every purchase with cash.  Feel the pain as you part from the cash.  Acknowledge what you are spending, and feel empowered that you are sticking to your budget.
If you want to shop online, get a debit card.  Just avoid using credit cards.

-Shop the bargains

There will be plenty of deals to come this holiday season.  Stay focused on the deals and only buy items you can get on sale.  Take advantage of buy one get one free sales such as buy one toy of a certain brand, get the second toy from the same brand free.

-Buy sets

For children, especially young children, buy toys that come in sets such as a baby doll with a stroller and a high chair.  Take those out of the package and break them into three different presents for the price you paid for the bundled gift.

-Look in unconventional locations

My children get presents from Santa and from me and my husband.  Since they were little, the toys that get from us are often gently used.  I shop garage sales throughout the summer and hide gifts away.  This year my three year old will get a new in the box baby doll that I picked up at a garage sale for $3.  My son will get a wooden box with five different games in it that I found at a garage sale for $5.

Obviously you may not have time to go to (or even find) garage sales now, but you can shop children’s resale stores for quality toys at a steep discount.

They say ‘tis better to give than to receive, and that is true more so when what you give is what you can afford.  Why not enjoy watching your family open their presents this Christmas without worrying where the money will come to pay for everything in January.  It is possible.  Beating Broke and I are both proof of that.

photo credit: aussiegall