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Megan and Scott's Journey:
"chill" holidays this year
This is the time of year where everyone’s hearts are full, people are smiling, snowflakes are falling, and we recognize all that we are thankful for. There are several holidays that fall over the winter season, and our family does celebrate Christmas so we are going to speak to that for this blog! … To get right into it, the holidays can be a very stressful time. Hosting or attending festivities can cause not only mental stress, but financial stress as well. What the heck do you purchase that’s wonderful and meaningful for the VIPs in your life? What do you bring to the work party? This year, we have prepared much more than past years for the season --- we have been dealing with much less stress due to our planning that we accomplished since this summer!
One of the actions we have taken to control the financial stress is that we started buying Christmas presents in July! This year for we have cut our spending almost 50%! This all started with a locked list in the notes section of Megan’s phone. We typed everyone’s name to purchase a gift for, as well as the couple of family/friend elephant and exchange gifts we were anticipating for this winter. As we thought of it – while at work, while shopping, while watching TV, while on the go – we wrote down ideas for each person. We used the big red circle emoji for gifts we still needed to purchase, and the lovely green checkmark for gifts that have been scooped up. Yes, we’re using past tense for referencing these emoji’s because it is over two weeks until Christmas and we are DONE SHOPPING AND WRAPPING!
We posted a poll on our Facebook page asking our families and friends their preferences on how early they begin any holiday shopping, and the results were almost precisely 50/50 for those who begin shopping before or after Black Friday. We hope the next time you hear about a family or friend grabbing a holiday gift in June and thinking, “whoa that person is nuts!” you think, “hey, thanks for reminding me!”
The pre-planning we did has really opened up our time surrounding the holidays to do things we haven’t been able to do in years past. Instead of running around last minute trying to pick up gifts we have been able to sit back, try new recipes, bundle up for walks with our K-9 kiddos, and spend more time with family and friends on the weekends and after work – which is what the holidays are about!
Peace, Love, and Peppermint Lattes…
Scott + Megan