I’m over on Hope for Women talking about Savoring the Holidays — Even on a Limited Budget. Here’s a snippet of my article:
Just because you have a tight budget does not mean you can’t enjoy Christmas. In fact, you might find that you enjoy the holidays even more when you don’t have a lot of money to spend. It forces you to slow down, simplify and get creative.
Give Experiences vs. Expensive Gifts
If you don’t have money in your budget to give your children expensive gifts, that’s OK! Focus your energy on making special memories together.
Check out Christmas movies from the library, listen to Christmas music on the radio or on Pandora, play board games, pop popcorn and make hot cocoa, and drive around and look at Christmas lights. Laugh together, talk together, be together. I promise these are much more important in the long run than being able to afford some high-dollar toy.
My children are getting older (9&12) and involved in so many activities. We have also had a tremendous amount of serious life-threatening illness within our immediate family (4 of us) and with both my parents. It has created more time in the ER/hospital/doctors appointments than i can even count. More often than not, mykids have had to been shuffled from one person to the next or have had to give up an event or time with someone, as i focus on the current health crisis. This year I decided we are changing things up a bit and connecting with eAch other, even if it’s for 5 minutes in our crazy-busy stress-filled lives. I created a simple calendar of the 25 days of Family. I only purchased 1 new game(yahtzee for 4.00 with Q, big yeah!). I looked around the house, gathered Christmas books, christmas puzzles, our favorite games, etc. I devised a calendar as to what we would do each night and created something for the kids to unwrap ech day. For the days we didn’t play a game or puzzle or book, I used a christmas card to write in the activity we are going to do (make hot cocoa, deliver christmas cookies, make Christmas candy, drive to see lights, make pizza together and watch a movie). The kids have been so excited to open up something new to see what our fun family time will be for that evening. It has been a joy to see them excited to spend that few minutes together to really connect. Thank you for all you do on this blog!
Growing up, every Christmas we’d take a drive to look at lights. Sometimes we’d stop in and carol if we wound up in the neighborhood of someone we knew. We always sang carols in the car together, and I remember the years when I had laryngitis and how I hated not being able to sing (sometimes I’d resort to whistling). Afterwards we’d have hot cocoa at home. It was free (except for the gas,which of course is less and less free these days) and one of my very favorite traditions.
Really needed to read this. This is probably our most money-poor Christmas yet, and I just needed the boost. Thank you.
Since we are on this subject I just wanted to thank you for helping me love Christmas again! I read your Christmas ebook and had my simple list and budget done the next day. And a lot of the gifts cost me nothing! I’m focusing a lot more on getting my kids into the giving spirit. Thank you so much!
I was just thinking about this earlier today, planning experiences for my kids to enjoy this year even on a tight budget. The thing is, memories tend to increase in value over time, while objects usually lose their value. Some of the best Christmas experiences I have a memory of had nothing to do with gifts.