No matter which holiday you celebrate, the season comes with many expenses and obligations andoliday spending can lead to debt if you don’t plan ahead.
In this episode, I’m sharing strategies to help you have a debt-free holiday season. I guide you through exercises to identify what you truly value about the holidays and how to incorporate those values into your budget. I also emphasize the importance of making a detailed gift list and setting realistic budgets so you avoid overspending. Additionally, I explore alternatives to traditional gifts, such as experiences and travel.
Whether you’re feeling the pressure of holiday obligations or concerned about overspending, this episode provides practical tips to help you enjoy the season without financial stress. Tune in for insights on celebrating a debt-free holiday!
Try these strategies to plan for the holiday so you can have a debt-free holiday season…
- [02:26] Put the holidays in your budget
- [05:12] Write down what you value about the holiday season
- [08:33] Decide how to express yourself this season
- [12:44] Make a detailed gift giving list
- [17:05] Change the gift giving narrative
- [22:15] Make an event list
Tune into this episode of Money Files to start planning for a debt-free holiday.
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 about Mastering Holiday Spending: How to Plan Ahead and Enjoy a Debt-Free Holiday, check out my episode How To Plan Ahead And Budget For Holiday Shopping!
Transcript for “Mastering Holiday Spending: How to Plan Ahead and Enjoy a Debt-Free Holiday”
Intro: Hi and welcome to Money Files. I’m Keina Newell from Wealth Over Now. I work everyday 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 and welcome back to another episode of Money Files. I’ve been talking about debt the last couple of weeks, but I want to interrupt me talking about debt because there’s something really important coming up and that is the holidays and you’ve heard me mix in some holiday things whether I’m talking about sales or what we should be prepping for in quarter four. But today I specifically want to talk about helping you create a debt-free holiday season regardless of what holidays you celebrate. I really want to help you think through how you are going to manage your spending this season. One of the things I think I do exceptionally well as a coach is I help clients ask themselves different questions.
Oftentimes, I think budgeting is, once again, it’s just thought of as like the list of bills and we’re not actually investigating our own spending. Like when we start to think about our own spending, we feel shame because we feel like we shouldn’t be spending money.
I actually had a client a couple weeks ago and she’s like, Keina, I have this trip and I’m going to Disney. And then I bought my godson and his friends, like I bought them tickets and I kind of feel bad that I bought them tickets, but he’s my godson and I want him to have this experience because I’m going to be down in Florida. And I’m like, hold on, can we go back to your budget? I’m like, I’m pretty sure in your budget it says that you have a family fund, right?
And she was like, oh, that’s what that’s for. I’m like, yes, it’s because you told me you value family and specifically you said your godsons. And so you have that money available and so now you get to talk about with yourself like how you want to be able to use it. Where prior to working with me, she didn’t have that money set aside. She still had the same value where she values her family, but she didn’t think about how her family shows up in her quarterly spending, her annual spending. And so by us actually diving into the things that she values, we are able to put her values in her budget. And the reason I share that with you is because I think the same is true for the holiday season. I have clients that Christmas is their favorite time of the year, or just as we transition into fall, it’s their favorite time of the year. They’re like, Keina, I want to go like Apple picking and I want to host Friendsgiving and I host people at my house and I love going to galas.
Those are the things that they enjoy and I want you to be able to do the things that you enjoy and I want you to be able to do it guilt free. I also want you to be able to do it and get to the point where you can do it without adding debt. Because I think the guilt comes from not being prepared, but when you are actually prepared and you are able to build on your preparation from one year to the next, you are going to be able to do more of the things that you love. That’s what I love with my clients is that they work with me for five months, but there’s the legacy that they have where year after year they’re like, I’m doing all of the things I love even better.
I had another client recently, she message me on Instagram and she and her daughter have the same, like their birthdays are around the same time. And so for their birthday they’re doing like a tea party and they’re going to a Broadway show. And her daughter, who I think she’s still pretty young, when I was working with her, she was only like five or six, but she’s still pretty young. And then she was like, oh mom, like that is going to mess up your budget. And my client was like, Keina, years ago before working to you, this totally would’ve messed me up. But I’m so thankful for the work that we’ve done together. This has been something that I’ve been able to set money aside for and I’ve always wanted to go to a Broadway show, but I’ve never been able to afford it and now I can’t afford it without messing up my budget.
So when I am talking about the skills on my podcast, even the skill today, I want you to be trying the things. Most importantly, I want you to be working with me in my five month intensive because we’re not just going to try, we’re going to implement the things, but what’s going to happen is you’re going to get compound results. You’re going to get better and better and better and better. And when you get better, that means that there’s more freedom in your spending. That means there’s more confidence with how you spend. That means that there’s more money in your account. But yeah, let’s just go ahead and we’re going to dive into you having a debt-free holiday. So also with this episode, if you go to my show notes, I have a template that I shared. I actually made it a couple years ago. And so it’s a template for planning ahead for the holidays to really get a visual on how you’re spending money.
I love helping clients also make like mini budgets. And so this would be an example of a mini budget where we’re really getting in and we’re getting detailed about how you want to spend money. So first I want you to take a step back and I think the holidays, sometimes we can get into just doing the things because we’re supposed to be doing the things. But I want you to jot down for yourself, and I literally mean jot down, even if you’re out on a walk with me right now, open up a notes app. If you’re sitting down, take some time, write this down in a journal that you have. But like what do you actually value about the holiday season? I think this is a really important question for you to ask because when you’re in the midst of the holidays, you might not remember what you value because things just start going crazy.
And the Christmas music is on, the red cups are out at Starbucks, and now all of a sudden you just don’t even remember what you actually enjoy about the holidays because you’re just in the midst of it. And so I want you to just decide right now what you enjoy about the holiday season. I know one of the things that I enjoy doing in the holiday season is going to look at Christmas lights and driving through with like Christmas music on in the car. That is one of my favorite things. I’ve been doing it since I was in high school and your girl is looking for Christmas lights. Something else that I really enjoy about the holidays is actually spending time in the kitchen with my mom and cooking when I’ve always been the soup chef and I’m responsible for cutting up the onions. I’m responsible for cutting up the celery and chopping all the things that go into her dressing.
She slowly relinquished some control and now I can make desserts and things of that nature. But like that’s one of the things that I really enjoy about the holidays is like being there with my family but being able to spend that time with my mom where we stay up really late at night. We wake up early in the morning and we are in the kitchen together. It’s something that I enjoy. For me, when I think about the holidays, it’s a little bit less about the gifts and it’s also just how I grew up, like my parents were very much like, this holiday is not about you. So there was some gift giving when we were younger, but it wasn’t always consistent. I’m actually really grateful that was true because I think it learned me. I think what I learned from that is there was a different level of appreciation and gratitude that I had. Granted, I will definitely say as a kid, going back to school, your friends would talk about all the million things that they got and you didn’t have as much.
That could have been a point of contention.
But as a grownup, I’m very thankful that my parents didn’t just make the holidays about us. So we were able to go to soup kitchens and feed people, donate and volunteer our time. Those are the things that I’ve carried into adulthood and I really try to, I think it’s a time for me also to reflect and think about what other people’s needs are. So just take some time and think about, like I said, what do you actually value about the holidays? And that kind of leads into my second question of just asking yourself, how do I want to express myself this season? And this is an opportunity for you to pause and thinking about maybe there are things that you’ve done just because you’ve done it in the past, but like how would you like to express yourself this season?
Maybe you don’t want to give a lot of gifts. Maybe you want to scale back on your gift giving or you want to scale back on your hosting, whatever they may look like for you. Maybe you want to add to your volunteer opportunities. But really thinking about, like how do you want to express yourself this season? Maybe you want to give to more organizations, whatever that might look like. I need you to also check in as you think about how you want to express yourself this season, what feelings does that elicit for you? I know just in talking to clients and there are different upbringings and different families, different expectations, is that there’s a lot of obligation that comes with the holiday season. And so you might feel obligated, you might feel shame, you feel really uncomfortable, if you’re like, I’m going to decide that I don’t want to give gifts this season or maybe I’m just going to give one gift.
I would just encourage you to sit with those feelings, walk around with them for this week and just really think about like what if you were okay feeling that way, what would happen. I know for myself, when I think about expressing myself over the holidays is like I actually do not like to give gifts out of obligation. I consider myself a very thoughtful gift giver and I like to give gifts because I see something, I’m like, oh my goodness, this person, like this is for this person, like this is for one of my girlfriends, this is for like my dad or my mom, whatever. I want to give because I thought of you and I don’t want to just give because you expect me to give you something. It’s not really how I roll.
And definitely that can feel uncomfortable. But I at least think that I do this. I don’t know what the feedback from all the people in my life would be, but I don’t like to give junk. I don’t like to receive junk and I don’t like to give junk when it comes to gift giving. And so those are some things that I keep in mind, not just during the holiday season but also around birthdays and just thinking about, like I don’t want to give out of obligation and I like to be the person that this is something that’s really meaningful and that’s how I want to show up as a gift giver and during the seasons. So just think about like I said, for yourself you might be like, I just love getting people gifts. Maybe that’s your thing and you and I can be different. That’s okay. You and I can be similar and that’s okay.
What I am pushing for here is that I want you to know why you show up the way you do and how you show up. And only you can answer that for you. I think that that’s incredible and remarkable information for you to have because then you get to go in and think about how that impacts your spending or how you want it to impact your spending. So those two questions, what do I value about the holidays and how do I want to express myself this season? And also just paying attention to like what feelings does that bring up for you? That’s going to be very important for creating a debt-free holiday because you may have more ideas than you have money. So you are also going to have to wrestle with those feelings as well, especially if your goal is to have and experience that debt-free holiday.
So now to get into like the technical pieces of this, I want you to, I’m going to specifically talk about gift giving first. The first thing I want you to do is I want you to make a list of the people that you are going to give gifts to or that you could give gifts to. I want you to be detailed. I don’t just want you to say family, I want you to talk about Uncle Bob, I want you to talk about Aunt Betty. I want you to talk about Doug, your little niece, Sarah. I need you to list everybody out. Take a piece of paper, list them all out. The reason I want you to see everyone and also think about coworkers or you have the doorman or you want to give something to the UPS guy that comes by, whatever that looks like, write it all out and make your gift list. How many people are on it? Because a lot of us are going into the holiday season and we don’t even know how many people we want to give gifts to. We don’t even know what the budget is. We don’t have any of that calculated.
We’re going in with vibes and we’re going in with energy and vibes and energy will keep you broke. So make that list. I would also say that beside the list, think about what you want to get that person or like if you know okay, for my dad I’ve been really wanting to get him a wireless speaker, whatever that is, maybe there are some things that you already know, but as you are writing things down, you can also put a dollar amount and maybe you don’t have the exact thing that you want to get someone, but you kind of know the dollar amount. I am asking you to go through this exercise because if you have 20 people on your list and with those 20 people on the list, you want to spend $100 on each person, guess what? You are going to quickly realize that you need $2,000 to spend $100 on each person.
Some people might be at $200 and some people at $50 and some people at $30. But I want you to get clear because at the end of writing out your list and writing what you want to get people and writing how much you want to spend, the next question I need you to ask yourself is how do I feel about this number? Do I agree with this number? And if you have 20 people and you’re going to spend $100, do you actually want to spend $2,000 on this list of people in front of you because this is just gifts? We haven’t included any travel, we haven’t done anything else. This is just gifts. And this is how your holiday season turns into debt is because you don’t have a plan but you writing down everybody’s name and how much you want to spend right now, you’re doing no harm. You are just simply putting people’s names down and that’s okay.
You can start to modify what your plans are. And so you can think about like, okay, I’ve talked about this with some of my clients and one of my friends does this really well. She has a gift closet at her house so she’ll pick up things throughout the year as she thinks about different people and she saves them for whether it be birthdays, holidays, etcetera. So if you, maybe in your house you have a gift closet and you can be thinking about the people on your list. Do I already have something for some of these people? If you already have something for some of the people on your list, then you can also like mark that off. Now maybe the list has gone down to $1,600 because you already have, four people on the list that are taken care of, but you’re going to be able to start to see the gaps.
You also, as you make this list, you’re going to be able to think about what opportunities and what sales do you want to be able to capture. If there’s something that you absolutely know on Black Friday is going to be on sale for Uncle Bob, then you can buy it. But you want to be able to make this list. You want to be able to think about who are the people on this list that I’m actually buying for. But I also want to offer to you that as you make this list and you’re asking yourself about whether or not you actually like the amount of money that you spend, are there any gift giving narratives that you want to change?
Oftentimes I talk to people about their kids. I think that there’s a lot of guilt and just guilt that I think parents place on themselves or obligation I should say, that they place on themselves for what they want to give their kids for Christmas. I always offer to them, I’m like, you told me that you guys were going on a trip for Christmas. You are going to Disney, or you told me you were going to The Bahamas for Christmas. It sounds like your family values experiences. What if that’s just the Christmas gift that you guys take a trip every single year and it’s highlighting things like that, that you are already doing and how you get to shape the conversation and the narrative in your household about that. This is our family values, experiences, not things and this is what we’re doing for the holidays.
I had another client, if you listen to her story, her name’s Chrissy. Chrissy and I, we actually talked, she has two boys and we started working together, it was right before the holidays last year. And her son plays baseball. So she was buying her son like a baseball bat and she’s like, he needs this already for the season and it’s going to be his Christmas gift. So we had like baseball equipment and things in her budget. It was a very easy thing to name, like this actually doesn’t even need to come out of the holiday budget. It’s going to come out of the fact that I know I’m buying him equipment, but he is going to receive it as a Christmas gift. You making this list is going to allow you to walk yourself through those types of decisions.
I want to offer, if you have kids or you know someone with kids offer this to them. I’ve heard it from other parents, but I love the trend because I think that a lot of people buy junk nowadays. That is my thought, that a lot of people buy junk and there are toys and things that people buy and nobody ever sees it again. One of the things that I’ve heard of parents doing is that their kids get three gifts, they get a need, a want and a read. And it’s very, very clear. They’ve established that in their household. You get something that you need, you get something that you want and you get something that you can read. And I think this is helpful because it can shape the gift giving narrative in your household for your holidays to where you’re not spending a thousand dollars on the three kids that you have.
Where if you spend a thousand dollars on each kid and it’s putting you into debt, I would say that you’re leaning into just the gift giving culture and you’re not actually establishing boundaries for how you want to manage money in your household and manage expectations. So you could do, need, want and read. Actually online, I saw another one that they said wear, so their kids actually get four things. But you get a need, you get a want, you get a read and you get a wear. In the years where like our parents would also give us things for Christmas, there were Christmases where we got a flat $100. I mean as a kid I felt very wealthy with my $100. But it also made me think about like, okay, well when it’s my money, what do I actually want to get?
So that could also be an option where you give your kids money and maybe you don’t give them gifts and they have to then use the money to buy the things that they really, really want because it also is going to teach them some fiscal responsibility, the very thing that you’re also learning in your own life. I know I kind of went off on a little tangent thinking about people with kids, because that’s my audience too. I have single moms out there who have toddlers and I have some parents out there that have big kids. I am always talking about like, hey, I want you to decide how you want to shape the culture in your household around money. And yes, your kids may huff and puff a little bit, but I want you to know that you’re instilling in them solid practices and tools that they’re also going to need when they’re out there on their own.
So make your gift list, go through your list, decide how much you want to spend on each person and think about what do I already have and what is your actual budget? What is your budget for gift giving and decide is this over or under my budget? What have I already accounted for and planned for financially and what might be new or what’s unplanned and how close am I to the budget if I am over a budget, like how am I going to account for this difference? So these are the questions you need to be asking yourself. And these are the things that are going to help you stay out of debt for the holidays. So we talked about gifts. The other side of the holidays and being debt free is to also make your event list.
What is happening? So I think the holidays start in November and I think they basically end the first or second week of January. So with this, I want you to think about what events do you have coming up? Gifts may show back up in this, like if you have a gift exchange with friends or maybe you’re hosting a brunch, maybe you’re hosting Thanksgiving dinner, whatever that might look like for you, I want you to think about the events that you have or maybe you’re traveling and for Thanksgiving and Christmas, it may just be driving, but I still need you to consider that you’re traveling because also what’s going to happen, is that you have a dog that you need to board or there’s a hotel room that you need or maybe you have a photo shoot, your family always does a family photo shoot because they send out cards.
These are things, I know that doesn’t seem like an event sending out the cards, but it’s a reason that you spend money in the holidays and it looks different. So as we start to get to the holidays, I like people to be more detailed about what they’re spending their money on because it’s going to help them identify what the gaps are. And so with your event list, write all your events down and then similarly you’re going to write down how much you think you need for that event. How much do you need for Thanksgiving dinner? How much do you need for the hotel? How much are you going to need if you’re traveling and you’re eating and there’s food on the road? Even if you go over budget this holiday season, you going in with a plan is still going to help you come under budget.
Keina what do you mean by that? You going in with no plan means that whatever happens, happens, this is just the holidays, I got to figure it out. But if you go in with a plan, you are going to overspend less. Even if you are like Keina, I am 11 months behind savings. And so don’t ignore this planning because you feel like you don’t have money saved. It’s all the more reason to go through this process. The reason you want to go through the process, regardless if you have money saved or not saved, is that it is going to help you shape your holiday budget for 2025. If you realize, okay, I actually spent $3,000 over the holidays in between events, in between gift giving. And so I know going into next year I need to plan to save $3,000.
And so planning to save that $3,000, you can then divide that over 12 months and you know that you need to be saving $250 a month for your holidays, but having this level of detail is going to help you get there. And next end of October, early November, when you sit down to do this same exercise and think about your gifts and think about your event list, you’re going to have money in the bank and you are going to have your year of practice behind you. And so you’re going to have a different level of implementation, you’re going to have new thoughts, you’re going to have new ideas, you’re going to have new feelings that are going to help you have another debt-free holiday. And that’s the goal, is that over time you shift and you get better and that you are making progress.
I always tell my clients I’m not going for perfection. We are looking for what are the things we’re learning about ourself. What are the patterns we’re learning and how do we want to support ourself the next time something like this happens? So that is the episode for today. Like I said, I want you to create the scenario for you to have a debt-free holiday and thinking about what are the things I value about this season and how do I want to actually express myself and how do I want to experience this season? I would also add, just thinking about like in January, how do you want to feel when you get your credit card statement, how do you want to feel when you open up your bank account?
So that’s like I said, all I have for you today. And if you’re like Keina, oh my goodness, you talk so fast, but this resonates with me, but have no idea where to start. I encourage you to apply for my five month coaching partnership. We can do this work together and get discreet as possible. Even if you have $0 saved for the holidays. I am a firm believer as like we’re starting somewhere and we are going to go with the next best step so that way you feel successful going into December with a plan. So thank you so much for tuning in and I look forward to chatting with you next week, bye.
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.
