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Christmas 2008 has not yet arrived, but it is never too early to start planning for next year.  Planning, after all is the key to successful financial management.  While you cannot predict where the economy will be a year from now, or what your financial situation will be, planning for upcoming events, no matter how far away, is always a safe and wise route to take. search viagra edinburgh phentermine find and sweats night effexor

Start now.  Take a few moments to go over your list of gifts given from this holiday season, or if you don’t have one, make one.  See how much you spent on who, and if it was really necessary: perhaps you spent too much for one person, while feeling that you should have spent a little more on another.  Some people simply do not appreciate anything that is given to them regardless of how thoughtful the gift.  Others are just as ecstatic receiving something that may be trivial to others but appreciate it more because of the sentiment attached to it.  There is no law that says you have to give a gift simply because you know them or because others do: it is perfectly acceptable to stop giving certain people gifts, especially if you are not in a position to do so.  Use this list as the start of next year’s list.

From there try to get an estimate of what it will cost you to give gifts to everyone on the list.  Having a sense of how much you want to spend will help you to set a saving goal.  Go ahead and open up a high-yield savings account to collect the money, and break down your spending goal into monthly deposits or make payments parallel to your paychecks.  This will help you get into a routing and after a little time will seem like second nature, like making transfers into your personal savings.  This accomplishes two things: it makes saving easier by breaking it down into smaller, more manageable amounts as well as earning interest to help with any shortfall that may occur due to adding someone to the list.

You may also want to start shopping early too.  I know a lady who goes to stores after the holiday and stocks up on toys and other items at tremendous discounts.  This step not only helps you save money on the gifts that you give, but you can also use these purchases during the year for events such as birthdays or for children as rewards for doing well in school or other reasons.  Sales do not occur only during the Christmas season.  Many stores have sales throughout the year to move any remaining inventory of older items in order to make room for the new.

Another thing that can help, and one that applies to regular, everyday things is to make some extra cash by by signing up to take surveys or for market research panels.  A site like My Points rewards points in exchange for simply reading e-mails, taking surveys, trying products or services, and shopping.  The points can be exchanged for gift cards to numerous stores.  E-rewards is another similar site in which you get “paid” to take surveys, and can exchange the rewards for magazine subscriptions, airline miles, hotel points, or gift certificates.  There are plenty of sites such as MySurvey, Greenfield Online, Lightspeed Consumer Panel, and many others which pay consumers to take surveys on many things like shopping, dining, cellular service, bank ratings, etc.

The Christmas gift-giving season is not going to disappear, regardless of how the economy is doing, but you can always take measures to make it easier on you and your wallet by spending a little time and planning.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 8th, 2008 at 4:08 pm and is filed under general. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.