We all love the holidays. It’s a time visit with loved ones that we don’t get to see often enough. We share special meals and spirits and enjoy the fun around the annual gift exchange with our friends and family.
It’s easy to get carried away at the moment, believing the January bills to be far away. In the 26+ years, we’ve spent helping Manitoba families manage their debts, we at Creditaid have often seen the negative impact that too much indulgence at Christmas / holiday season can have on our clients’ finances in the new year.
Like many areas of your financial affairs, the key to successful and safe holiday gift giving is adequate planning. Ideally, we are all saving a bit of money throughout the year to meet our December expenses. And before we set foot in the mall (or log in to our favorite online retailer’s site) we need to have a clearly established plan. We need to know how much money we’re going to spend on gifts for the Holidays, and how many gifts we want to purchase, and for whom.
That’s why we’ve developed the Holiday Gift Giving Planner. It’s a tool designed to help you plan gifts for all the special people in your life, while adhering to a budget that you design ahead of time.
Let’s face it – we are all constrained by financial realities. We buy gifts for our friends and family to show them how much we appreciate them, but nobody wants to see us put ourselves in a bad financial position.
Our easy-to-use planner can be downloaded here, and is self-explanatory. More than just a budgeting tool, the guide even includes space to allow you to keep track of hiding places for all your gifts and prompts you to enter details about wrapping and shipping of gifts.
Make these upcoming holidays great, by planning to give great gifts that fit the budget to all the nice people on your list, without overextending your finances.
Happy Holidays, from all of us at Creditaid!