Today, I am interrupting how you spend money during the holidays. So many of us overspend during the holidays because we are programmed to take advantage of Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and the endless brand deals. There is so much pressure to buy right away or risk losing out.
Stores run sales all year round. Odds are, a special holiday deal will be available later on. So, instead of impulsively buying, take a step back and make a plan before you spend. This holiday season learn new tools to help you enjoy holiday spending without regret in January when you look at your credit card bill.
Listen in as I share how I monitor my finances during the holidays. I give tips on planning and budgeting so you can give gifts you feel comfortable buying without creating unexpected credit card bills. Holiday shopping doesn’t have to destroy your finances. Tune in to learn how!
In this episode, I touch on the following topics:
[04:54] Building financial awareness
[05:50] Don’t fall victim to the pressure of sales and coupons
[09:50] Write down what you want & need during the holiday season
[12:58] Budget per person & per gift
[18:30] The gift closet
[19:35] Giving gifts to yourself
Tune into this episode of Money Files to learn how to maintain control of your finances and budget during the holiday shopping season.
Are you ready to start asking for help with your finances? Apply to work with me, and let’s start working towards your financial goals.
IF YOU LOVED THIS CONVERSATION ON HOW TO PLAN AHEAD AND BUDGET FOR HOLIDAY SHOPPING CHECK OUT MY EPISODE ON HOW TO NAVIGATE OVERSPENDING WITHOUT GUILT!
Transcript for “How To Plan Ahead And Budget For Holiday Shopping”
Intro: Hi and welcome to Money Files. I’m Keina Newell from Wealth Over Now. I work every day with professional women and solopreneurs to help them get out of financial overwhelm and shame so they can experience more flexibility and ease with their finances. Are you ready to gain confidence and learn to manage your finances intentionally? Tune in and grab financial tips that will help you master the way you think about and manage your finances.
Keina: Hello, I have a special ask. So I’m interrupting your podcast episode that you’re used to on Tuesdays, but I have a special ask because in a couple weeks it’s going to be my 100th episode. That means that I’ve sat down at my computer about a hundred times, whether it be with clients or just with my own thoughts and ideas about money and thinking about you as a listener and what you need to hear in order to shift how you think about money, your relationship with money to interrupt all those thoughts to tell you you can’t do it, whatever it is. But I’ve sat down on my computer and recorded numerous episodes and I would love it if you would celebrate 100 episodes with me. So if you go to the show notes, you’re going to find a link to leave me an audio podcast review.
Now, before you’re like scared that you don’t want to actually talk out loud to leave me a review, let me tell you how I’m going to use it. My lovely podcast manager, she’s going to record all of the reviews that I get and she’s going to help me create a unique 100th episode. And it’s going to be you telling me and telling listeners what’s your favorite episode and why. So if you’ll take 90 seconds today, not tomorrow, but today, because I know your to-do list is so full. But if you’ll take 90 seconds and visit the link in my show notes to record a 90 second review, sharing with me what is your favorite podcast episode and why, it would bring me so much joy. I’m so excited to hear from you and I look forward to chatting with you for a hundred more episodes.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Money File. So I am hoping that this episode finds you in the midst of preparing for the holidays, but I also hope that it prepares you in planning for the holidays. So I was supposed to have another episode that came out today, then I’m like nope, nope, nope. I need to help people, my people this week and I’m probably too late potentially because the industry of shopping may have gotten to you before I have gotten to you because I know Target has already started doing Black Friday specials and things are just starting a lot earlier this year. One of my favorite places to shop is Athleta. And I like Athleta because I like working out and I really like their workout clothes. At the time I’m recording this is November 13th and just this past weekend they’re like “oh, early access for Black Friday. 25% off.”
I would like to tell you guys I didn’t buy anything. I came out unscathed. It doesn’t mean that I won’t buy anything, but I’ve gotten really good at managing my urges when it comes to shopping. Every now and again I’ll be like oh and things will appear at my house. A couple weeks ago that appeared in the form of shoes because I decided that I needed shoes and then I ended up sending a lot of them back because I didn’t actually like the ones that I ordered. But I share that with you because I am just as human as you are when it comes to spending money. I have just observed myself a lot when it comes to my spending habits and so I’m able to have conversations with myself about what it is that I actually want, what it is that I actually need and that is a game changer.
It’s one of the things that I love to see happen for my clients is when they are able to talk themselves through their own spending. Because if you’re really honest with yourself, you don’t need every single thing that comes into your house. You don’t need every single thing that comes into your Instagram feed or your Facebook feed, but the world has made it so easy for us to gain access to what we think we want. You have Apple Pay, you have Google Pay, you know there’s PayPal, there’s Klarna, there’s Affirm. And so you can find yourself saying yes more and you get this like instant gratification. So I have built my own financial awareness about things like when I think about that Athleta sale that was just this past weekend, like I actually know that that’s not the last time they’re having a sale guys. It’s not.
And so I also know that I’m going to get what I need whenever I need it. And so some parts of, especially like with sales, it’s like with myself, it’s like you have this fear of missing out. Like you have this FOMO of the sale, you guys have seen the reels and the memes where right now there’s like a cat that drives around and it’s going to target to spend $200 to use my $5 gift card. Or Target oftentimes is like “oh, if you spend $50 on household products, you can get a $10 gift card.” And so there’s just so many things that are created to cause us to spend money. And if you don’t actually stop and think about it, you don’t realize it. And it’s what I love helping my clients understand and something that I’ve started to understand for myself is “wow, look, I can like say no to a sale, I can say no to a coupon and I can come out on the other side.” I’m going to be okay. That’s building your own financial awareness.
I don’t believe that that has anything to do with restriction. It’s being able to process an urge about something that we fear that we’re going to miss out on if we don’t actually get the thing that we want right now, like it’s going to be on sale again. And I’m going to take you guys back several years, probably almost like 10 years if not more. I was an educator and one of my favorite stores to shop at, and I haven’t shopped here in a very long time, used to be Ann Taylor and I liked Banana Republic too, but it was like Ann Taylor, Banana Republic, like those are my go-to professional stores. And I don’t remember when this happened, but I remember watching it happen. Stores like Ann Taylor and Banana Republic used to only have sales sometime. Like when you saw that they were offering like a 40% off sale, it was actually a sale.
And then what I noticed as a buyer was like “oh, you guys have like a 40% off sale every holiday weekend.” Or then it started to, like the frequency shifted in which they were having sales, where you would just see like oh, prices are slashed, it’s 40% off this week, it’s 30% off this week. But I remember just watching, because those were my two favorite stores, I just remember watching the sales at the store and realizing, I remember having a conversation with myself and it wasn’t like anything like a profound moment where it’s like Keina sit down, we’re going to talk. It wasn’t like that, but I do just remember realizing oh, they have a sale all the time. I don’t need to jump to buy the pants or the coat or the shoes because it’s going to be on sale in a few weeks from now.
And I don’t even necessarily need to fear them not having my size because if it’s something that’s a classic piece, they generally have it all the time. But it’s just one of those things that since that happened probably over 10 years ago, I’ve taken that into how I look at buying now. I’m like okay, when do I know it’s an actual sale on something? One of the things that I just purchased here recently was I purchased some new workout shoes. I like Nike Metcons for my workouts. And I remember I’d had a particular set of shoes in my Nike app cart. I probably had them there for at least 90 days. And Nike is another one where they offer sales all the time. It’ll be 20% off from Memorial Day weekend; they may come back out with something for the 4th of July weekend. And so I’m very proud of myself for noticing sales cycle trends with the places that I like to shop because it allows me to actually identify what is something that I’m willing to spend money on right then.
And also it allows me to recognize how I might have this fear of missing out when it comes to spending. And so I say all that to say because I think it’s very appropriate to realize the season in which we’re entering in. And it is a heavy buying season where they’re telling you, like right now you’re going to get the lowest price on this. This is the last time this is going to be on sale. And I think that in order to make it through the holidays, especially if you’re someone who loves to spend money, like I enjoy spending money as well, I want you to do the work off stage if you will, before you kind of get into the online shopping, before you actually get into the purchasing, I want you to take some time and actually identify what is it that you actually want going into the season. What do you want for yourself? What do you want to buy for other people? What’s the experience that you want people to have? Thinking about those things and I would encourage you to actually write it down.
So with my clients, something that I would tell them to do and I’ve gone through clients with this, is let’s actually look at who you’re buying gifts for. Let’s write down their name. Let’s either think of an amount that you want to spend. I am an intentional gift giver. I don’t like just giving people junk and I don’t like to receive junk. I am someone who would actually rather give you gifts like throughout the year than a forced day to give you a gift. But anyways, that’s a different story. But depending on what type of gift giver you are, but being able to write down the people that you want to be able to give a gift to and thinking about what do I actually desire? Like what do I want to buy people? A lot of us are buying out of what may be obligation or we feel obligated to buy for someone. And so I want you to take the time to think about who’s actually on your list this year. Are their coworkers on your list, are their family members, are their friends?
What do you actually want to buy for the people that you’re buying for? What are the things that maybe you like to buy for yourself during the holiday season? But I want you to put it down on paper because I want you to be thinking about, as Black Friday comes and you see Cyber Monday and we see all of the sales, I want you to have an idea of like one, what you want to get someone, because I want you to know, what’s the price I’m willing, like if I want to get a Sonos speaker for someone, am I willing to spend $300 on this particular person? If I wanted to get somebody else like AirPods, am I willing to, I don’t even know how much AirPods are, that’s bad, huh? I don’t have a set of AirPods. I have a different set of wireless headphones. But am I willing to spend $200 if I am getting someone an Apple watch. I’m naming like higher-end things, but like sometimes in our head these are the gifts that we’re actually thinking through but we haven’t actually thought through the monetary piece of it. We’ve maybe just thought of the thing, but maybe we haven’t thought of the money.
And so I want you to think of both because this is what’s going to help you capture how much money you spend during the holidays. It’ll allow you to set a budget going into the holidays, one that you agree with, and you won’t just be going into your holiday spending blindly. And it’s also going to help you think through the sales that you actually want to be able to say yes to. So go through, make a list of the people that you actually want to buy for, make a list of like what you want to buy them and then really being clear on what’s the amount that I want to spend on this particular gift or this particular person. Writing it all out is going to allow you a level of clarity that maybe you’ve never had before. And so you may write, people’s names down like okay, I got my mom, my dad, my sister, I have five nieces, two nephews. And if you start writing things down and then you start writing like the dollar amount next to it, you might realize, wow, I’ve already, like just on paper I’ve spent $1,500. And so now you get to have a conversation with yourself before you’ve done any spending. Do I want to spend $1,500 in the next like six weeks on these gifts?
You get to have that conversation with yourself and it’s a powerful conversation to have with yourself because you might decide, I don’t want to spend $1,500. And so a couple things can happen from here, you might decide that you want to buy different gifts for people, you might decide maybe you guys want to do, I have friends that have bigger families and they’re adults. They do like a name exchange at Thanksgiving. And so everybody picks a name and then you’re responsible just for focusing on one person instead of focusing on all of the people. But it’s an opportunity for you to think about do you want to start a new tradition around gift-giving?
With this episode what I want to do is interrupt how you spend money during the holidays because so many of us spend money during the holidays just because we are programmed to do all of the things. We have to take advantage of the Cyber Monday, we have to take advantage of the Black Friday. We have to take advantage of, they told us it’s 20% off in our Target app and so we just feel so pressured, but we’ve never sat down to actually look at the numbers and decide, is this how we actually want to spend money? Is this how I want to spend my money in the next eight weeks, the next six weeks? And if the answer is yes, then move forward with it. If the answer’s no, I want you to think about how do you want to show up? How do you want to spend money? One of the things when I was with my coworkers, I always loved to give people that I worked with a little something. And so that was a time in which my mom and I actually used to kind of co-plan it.
When she was working, she’d be “oh, I’m going to do salt scrubs or I’m going to do a little hand sanitizer with a gift card” or whatever it is. But being able to plan those things beforehand and really think through a budget and think about how you wanted to spend money, it allowed me to show up in, like my thoughtful and intentional way. But it also allowed me to not feel like I needed to go spend, $500 to make sure that my coworkers were all appreciated or taken care of. And so there was years where I may have gotten, like at Trader Joe’s, they had like four little chocolates in a box, little dark chocolate salt caramels. There was like one year where everybody got that, or like a year where they got salt scrubs. And so it’s just really thinking about like in advance, how do you desire to show up and how do you want to communicate that? And these are conversations that I’m like having with clients, especially clients with kids.
I have a couple of clients who we’ve talked through and I’m not going to nail this exactly right, but you can Google it, we’ve talked about with kids, like you could think through with your kids, that your kids get something that they want, something that they can like I think it’s read, something that they need and there’s one other thing, but basically it keeps you from not spending tons of money because it’s like your kid may get a book, they may get something that they wear, they could get something that they need and then it’s like something that they want. So they still get to experience the holidays and you get to go through the gift giving. But you also get to, if you said that you wanted to spend two or $300 on a child, you get to honor that two or $300 that you’re thinking about.
But also when you’re going through that planning of Christmas, like if you were thinking about a child and you’re thinking about, okay, I’m going to get them something that they can wear, it’s going to help you be really intentional about okay, if Target, I keep coming back to Target, clearly I had known way too much about Target, but if Target does, 30% off kids clothes, I can make the intentional decision to buy things then because I know that actually seems like a pretty reasonable deal. Or if Gap has something, and I know my kids need a coat or we’re going into the winter months and they need things like I can be really intentional about what I’m buying at that time. So it’s going to shift how you’re spending money and you’re not just going to be spending money because you think I need to be spending money. So that’s what I would say about that. Another thing that I would tell you, and guys I apologize if you’re like “Keina you are all over the place in this episode.”
I pressed record and I started talking because I wanted you to have some new thoughts as we go into this week. And you’re going to go spend it with family and you’re going to probably have more downtime, which is going to mean more shopping. And I just wanted to give you some new thoughts to think about your spending and create new habits in your life if that’s what you desire to do this holiday season. But one of the other things that I love about one of my friends, and I’ve heard other people do this, is they kind of have like a gift closet. And if you’re someone like me, although I’m an intentional gift giver, but I also have a really hard time buying something and holding onto it for a while, but throughout the year, if I see something that reminds me of someone in my life, I can just pick it up and I can put it into my gift closet. And I got that idea from one of my friends who does a really good job of picking things up throughout the year. And then when it comes time to give gifts and it could be, birthdays and not just the holidays, but it’s one of those things too where it spreads your spending out throughout the year.
And I think that you do it in a way that maybe you don’t have as much pressure. So I just wanted to throw that out there. I think that sometimes parents are really good at that, like they save the shoes that they bought for their kids three months ago because they found a really good deal on them. But like the kids don’t get it for three months out and nobody knows, nobody gets hurt. So that’s one way to think about your gift-giving when it comes to other people. The other thing that I wanted to talk to you about is the gift-giving for yourself. Let’s be really honest, what also happens during this time of the year is that you go and buy things for yourself because there are so many deals that you’re like ooh, ooh ooh. And you want all the things. And so like I was telling you, I learned the sales that Ann Taylor had, I learned the sales that Banana Republic had.
The places that you enjoy shopping, watch what’s going on with the numbers. So there may be things that you feel like you can’t miss out on Black Friday or Cyber Monday because you feel like oh my goodness, this is like the best price but it may not actually be the best price. So I’ll just give you examples from my life. I use a face wash by PCA skincare and they don’t always have sales. And so I do know that if I kind of see something on sale from them for like 20 or 25% off, it’s actually a good deal. Another one would be, I use Aveda hair products. They’re shampoo. Sometimes I see like a 30% off with them. They’re not someone that runs sales all the time. They run sales like at Mother’s Day, sometimes they may have one at Labor Day. I don’t know if they have like a Christmas one because I generally may stock up like once a year. I used to also use these brow pencils by Anastasia and on Black Friday they would always have a really good deal. So I might buy like two of them or three of them because they would carry me through the year.
But it’s like when I have something that I love, I generally also know the sale cycles of the company. I know a couple years ago I bought like a Sonos speaker. Sonos is also something that doesn’t go on sale all the time, but they have some type of sale for Black Friday. And actually this year I’ve seen more Sonos speakers on sale, like at Costco. So I don’t even know if their Black Friday deals are as good as they say that they are. I say this because as we go into the end of the year and we have our own wants, desires, and needs, make a list of things that you actually, like maybe there are things that you normally buy and you’re like okay, I want to take advantage of the Black Friday sale or make a list of things that maybe you have been thinking about. One of the things I actually wrote down on my Black Friday list was, I was like oh, I’m going to look at sheets because I’d been wanting some new bedding.
And so that was one of the things that I had told myself. And then there was, hold on, let me see. I feel like there was one, I’m contemplating whether or not I want to get a walking pad for my office. So I said, okay, I might look at some sales for that. And then something else that I had put down is I needed another water bottle, like Hydro Flask. So it’s I’ll see if there’s any sales for Hydro Flask, but that’s generally how I have been using it like when I’m thinking about Black Friday, when I’m thinking about buying things for myself is like those are three things that I wrote down and I will probably look and see what’s available. But what I also know, even as I’m talking to you guys about this, and I was thinking about the Athleta that I was telling you about is Athleta has a phenomenal sale after Christmas. So I may buy something before Christmas, I’m not 100% sure, but because they’re also a company that I love, I kind of know their sale cycles and I know what’s worth it for me to buy and what’s not worth it for me to buy. That might be something after Christmas that if I want to, re-up on some workout attire that I may do that on December 26th versus doing that on November 24th.
And so I am talking through this because I want you to do the work of knowing your own buying habits, your own spending habits. If you are always going after the urge, like investigate why that is, look at, do I even need this? But also I want you to be able to spend money and I want you, if you feel like you’re getting a deal, I want you to be able to get a deal that makes sense. And I want the deals to make sense. I want your numbers to make sense. And so it’s like being able to write down some of these things. And even as I was telling you guys about the sheets, I actually don’t know that I’ll actually look for sheets anymore. I had it in my head that I wanted some like, I stayed at the Four Seasons maybe, I think it was like last year they had the best betting and I was trying to do some reviews on whether or not I wanted to order sheets from them because you can order them online.
And someone recommended that I get the sheets from Parachute, has like a hotel set of sheets. And I have a friend that I remember she had gotten some of the Parachute sheets and I was asking her “hey, were they worth it? Do you love them?” Whatever. She was like “I mean, they’re nice but they feel just as good as my like Sam’s Club sheets.” And so for me, I was like “oh, well I don’t need to go and spend $200 on sheets necessarily.” Like I can go and get Sam’s Club or I can get Costco and like that will probably also be okay. So just to give you a real life example of how I kind of talk myself through some spending decisions, like there are some things that I spend money on because I am okay with investing, but like this sheet decision, I’m not convinced that I need $200 sheets.
Now if somebody tells me they’re super silky and I have to have them, listen, your girl can make a hard pivot and I’m going to get them. But like I said, I’m not convinced that that’s what I need and I love to be able to enjoy what I buy. Like that is something that I have valued being able to create over the years and maybe like more so intentionally this last couple years that I feel like the things that I bring into my life I like actually really enjoy versus just kind of receiving packages and getting the dopamine hit of buying something. So I kind of feel like Oprah, like I have a really good curated favorite things list and the things that I spend money on are also the things that I go and tell my friends about that they need to spend money on. It’s not just me buying junk that I actually don’t really want.
So anyways thank you so much for tuning into this episode. And I want you to go and you’re going to listen to this on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. If you listen to it afterwards, you can still apply this to just your general spending. But really sit down, make a list for those people in your life that you want to buy for during the holidays and decide how you want to show up in advance. What do you want to buy and what is your budget? How are you going to stay within that budget? How do you make sure, like the people in your life, like how much money are you going to spend on each person? Is there a different way that you want to give this year? Like I was telling you my friend that draws names at Thanksgiving and then they’re responsible for buying a gift for that person at Christmas.
If you have kids, like do you want to change the way that you are giving gifts to your kids? And then also just thinking about like for yourself, like as you’re buying throughout the holiday season, are we buying just to buy because there are things that feel irresistible or do you have a curated list and do you know like this is actually a really good deal that I probably won’t be able to take advantage of until next year. And so I want to say yes to this because I don’t want your feelings to get hurt when you realize they have the same sale in January or February and you could have waited. So thank you again for tuning in and I will chat with you guys later.
Outro: Thank you so much for listening to Money Files. If you’re ready to take the next step to reach your financial goals, head to www.wealthovernow.com/appointment and let’s get started.
