Ah, Christmas. The twinkling lights, the gifts, the ornaments, the gifts, the caroling, the gifts … it’s the most wonderful, and expensive, time of the year!
Before you get the wrong impression and think all those gifts I mentioned are for our kids — they’re not. Since the beginning of time, we’ve stuck with a pretty tight program on presents for our children: They get three gifts from mom and dad (representing the gold, frankincense, and myrrh the Wise Men gifted to Jesus), and they each give each other one gift, making a total of 5 gifts per child. It’s definitely manageable and I’m grateful we set that standard early on.
But Christmas is about showing love to so many people who bless us through the year, not just giving presents to our family members. There are teachers, bus drivers, co-workers, and hair stylists. Some give to the mail carrier, newspaper deliverer, cleaners, and housekeeper. Not to mention the special ways we all choose to remember friends, neighbors and those in need! It all adds up, and our wonderful expressions of love can leave us feeling pretty low in January once the credit card bills arrive.
In an effort to combat credit card card combustion, Mike and I decided to take a new approach to our Christmas spending this year — CASH! There is lots of advice out there about ways to do this, but last December I read a blog post detailing a creative way to compile cash through the year and the ingenuity of it appealed to me. I would like to give the blogger credit, but unfortunately, I didn’t make a note of the source at the time.
Here’s how it works: Beginning January 1, we set aside 1 penny for every day of the year. Note I didn’t say we set aside 1 penny ON every day of the year, but that’s not bad — we would end up with $359 for our Christmas shopping (remember it’s Leap Year). The goal is to set aside 1 penny FOR every day of the year. For instance, today is May 11 — day 132 of 2016. That means we will set aside 132 pennies today for our Christmas fund. Tomorrow, May 12, we’ll set aside 133 pennies.
Now. We are not actually setting aside pennies, because who has that kind of time? Or patience? Or pennies?
Instead, we made a fancy chart of how much we need to throw in the bucket every month to meet our cash goal by December. (There might have been an Excel spreadsheet involved at one point but that is above my pay grade, so I have saved you from that tediousness. You’re welcome.) Since it’s only May, there is plenty of time to jump in and catch up.
January = $4.96, February = $13.34, March = $23.56, April = $31.95, May = $42.47, June = $50.25, July = $61.38, August = $70.99, September = $77.85, October = $89.90, November = $96.15, December = 108.81.
The total of all this is $671.61. Not bad! In our home, both of us have chosen to contribute to the fund, so our grand total will be $1343.22. Amazing! That will be more than enough for us to bless all the special people in our lives, and give to causes we care about — all without racking up unnecessary charges on the credit card.
I hope this way of setting aside cash inspires you like it did me. If you decide to jump in, let me know! You only need $116.28 to catch up. And just think how good you’ll feel in December, when you can pay cash for Christmas.