Enjoying the Holidays without Raiding Your Savings
Hello and welcome to Savings Circle. Where we help millennial professionals feel confident about managing their money. I’m your host Vineet Prasad.
On today’s episode, with the holidays right around the corner, we’ll be discussing gift giving. Specifically, what I’ve seen work really well for me and folks I’ve worked with in the past. Really the goal is to make everybody happy without sacrificing your long-term financial goals is the way I see gift giving so I’ll be breaking it down today into three different strategies that I’ve seen worked really well for people.
First one is when it comes to gift giving time and time again what I’ve seen with people is that thoughtful really beats expensive uh and that means a lot of the time especially if we’re in a rush to buy a gift we feel like we need to get something expensive something top of the line for people and that’s what will make them feel appreciated. What I’ve really seen in in my past as well as with other people is that sometimes an expensive gift that isn’t very personalized or thoughtful can feel more awkward than anything or just not as appreciated as a potentially less expensive more thoughtful gift that keeps in mind what someone really cares about or enjoys. An example from my own relationship is one of the best gifts I’ve ever gotten Stephanie, my wife, is a gift she has a series of books that she really likes and she was has all the books in the collection except for one. One-year I got her the missing book in her collection which she hadn’t been able to find and she really loved that, super excited about it even though it was I think only 10 15 and way less expensive than some of the other gifts we had done in the past so that’s a great example from my own experience. I myself also still treasure and pride a t-shirt uh that’s very customized to something I like that I got from Kita my sister years ago and cost five dollars so go to show thoughtful definitely beats expensive with gifts.
Second thing to consider is some kind of a gift-giving agreement or game or arrangement with your family or close circle of friends it helps everybody spend a bit less but still have a really good time and you probably know what I’m talking about here at games like white elephant I’ve done several white elephants with a group of friends or family and those are really fun because not only uh do you only get one gift for each person in the group but also you can decide that everybody can give something they have already um and they just don’t use anymore and give it to the group and then you kind of gamify who ends up with what. I think that’s a great idea um to have everybody be able to save more uh towards what matters to them and have a fun time. The other thing that works really well is secret Santa as I’m sure many people have played and experienced it can feel awkward to propose be that person hat says hey do you guys all want to do a secret Santa this year but a lot of people will appreciate it and say, “oh yeah that would be great” because um a lot of people in the same situation they have to spend time getting gifts for everybody figure that out as well as the expense.
The final thing I would say if you are doing a one of those gift-giving games trying to come up with a an arrangement for kind of a max price for everybody um just because oftentimes in families and friend groups there’s usually some people that earn more some people that earn less it can be awkward for those who earn less or earn more if their gifts are very different from everybody else’s in terms of price. So, having either like a cost limitation or maybe even a time limitation if people are making their gifts uh can be a good idea for that.
Finally, I just want to say it’s okay if as the holiday season comes up you have to dip into savings that you weren’t planning on it’s of course not ideal you ideally want to plan throughout the year and be putting money into what I’ve discussed many times in the past this concept of a revolving savings account. Where you figure out what are all the big unusual expenses throughout the year um figure out the monthly average for those you know take the cost divided by 12 so for example if you figure out that every year you spend $600 on gifts throughout the year then putting $50 a month away into your revolving savings in addition to putting other you know additional amounts per month for other things like vacations is a great idea and can make it so you don’t have to pull from say your emergency fund during the holidays. If this year that’s something you’re going to have to do know that um it’s very normal uh it happens to a lot of people that I’ve seen and work with just for next year maybe start thinking about how you can put money away into a dedicated fund for things like the vacations or income tax that you expect to owe or holiday gifts so it’s just less stressful and you have that money sitting there when it comes to next year and it’s time to buy gifts.
That’s all I have for today on gift giving. I hope you have an awesome holiday season! I appreciate you checking out today’s episode! If you want to ever look at more personal finance tips you can look at my website savingsacademy.com and if you found today’s episode useful I would greatly appreciate you leaving a rating or review it really helps more people find out about what I’m doing so I can help more people succeed around their finances and just feel confident around them
and that’s all for today until next time keep saving my friends keep saving.
