Christmas is right around the corner

There are only 101 Days (14 weeks) until Christmas! I am already starting to see Christmas items filling the shelves at many retail stores. According to the National Retail Federation, Americans spent an estimated $721 billion dollars on Christmas in 2018.1 During the 2017 holiday season, 44% of shoppers racked up more than $1,000 in holiday credit card debt and 5% accumulated more than $5,000 in debt.2 If a shopper puts $1,000 on a high interest credit card during the holidays and can only make the minimum payment of $25 per month, it will take four years to pay off that debt! Thankfully, by working with our financial coach, Jamie at Summit Credit Union, we have already put savings aside to pay for gifts, food, etc. so that when the holidays comes around, we can set a budget and stick to it. A good way to start saving is to put $100-200 per month into a separate savings account just for the holidays. If you start in beginning of the year, you will have $1,200-2,400 to spend on holiday gifts by the end of the year. That's a lot of money.

One thing we cut out of our budget is Starbucks, except for special occasions. If you are getting a $3 coffee drink every day, that's over $1,000 per year on coffee. Since we now make coffee at home every day, we spend approximately $11 every two months on coffee, buying it in a bulk bag at Costco. This is just one easy way to find $100 in your budget to put towards something else at the end of each month.

1 NRF forecasts holiday sales will increase between 4.3 and 4.8 percent

2 Here’s how long it will take Americans to pay off their Christmas debt