Queercents

We’re smack dab in the middle of the holiday season.  How are you doing on your spending goals?

I’ve never been one to go on a huge spending spree during the holidays.  Don’t get me wrong – I love to give and receive gifts.  However, I just don’t see the point of wracking up credit card debt to do it.  If I don’t have the cash to pay for something, it doesn’t go in my shopping cart.

Nevertheless, last year my partner and I went a little overboard buying presents for each other because it was our first Christmas together.  This year my partner and I agreed to a very low spending limit for buying holiday presents.  We agreed to limit the number of people that we bought gifts for, and we only spent $10 per person.  For gifts for each other, we agreed to stay under $75 total, including stocking stuffers.

It’s been both a challenge, and a little bit exciting to stick to our spending goals.  Lots of homemade presents are making their way to family and friends this year in order to meet our goals.  We’ve baked a lot of cookies, and this weekend was a fudge-packing extravaganza (pun intended).

Here’s how we were able to stick to our budget:  Read the rest of this entry »

Yeah, Yeah, I know… Halloween’s not even here yet and here he is talking about Christmas… how commercial.

Christmas cards are one of those expenses that people seem to forget about… I don’t even think people really budget for them unless they are of the type that send out hundreds of cards..

It is a big deal for the card printers though…they are already printing and stockpiling cards and lots of stores have already ordered the inventory that shortly will go out (or may already be) on display.

And a lot of people like to order those cards that are “imprinted” on the inside..(not for me though….I like hand signing and maybe a little note on how things have been going)…..imprinting takes time to do and get delivered let alone again the time it takes for them to be delivered by the postal system after you mail them to your friends. Read the rest of this entry »

Once you’ve laid the groundwork over the last few weeks: setting your intentions, planning in some free time, and aligning your spending, it is time to sit back and enjoy the holidays to the fullest. I’m not living in a fantasy land, I realize things are still going to pop up. After all,the visits with family begin and that brings with it a whole new ball of emotionally charged wax. What I do know is that how you show up for these days are the truest test of your commitment to what you said you wanted (the intentions you set).

For instance, if your intention is to have a holiday filled with peace, love, connection, and some fun and the inevitable hiccups in plans show up (as they will), you get to choose your reaction. Will you choose something consistent with your intention? Or will you revert to jumping into frantic, angry, or stressed out mode? It may sound easy on paper, but I know it is not as easy as it sounds. When faced with a moment that makes you want to run away screaming, I know it is so much harder to take a few breaths and stay present with what is happening. I also know that flying off the handle does nothing but create a bigger mess to clean up later.

Here are my tips for staying cool and stress free during the holidays. And remember, if you are feeling good on the inside you won’t be tempted to throw money at a situation and binge eat, drink, shop, or whatever other unhealthy coping mechanism you’re tempted to fall back on. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that you’ve set your intentions and planned some spontaneity , it’s time to get even more serious with ensuring your spending aligns with your intentions. Conscious spending is the key at all times of the year but no time can be more dicey than the holidays. With emotions running high, retailers on full attack, and the extra desire for convenience during the hustle and bustle of the season, the temptations and opportunities to blow it are many.

The biggest pitfall people fall into has little to do with money itself at all. Our emotions fuel all our spending. Once we’ve got our basic needs met, the rest is all about emotions and perceptions. Where we get hung up is when we don’t tend to our own emotional housekeeping. Instead, we attempt to spend our way to fulfillment. It just isn’t possible, not at the holidays, not ever. We feel that if we don’t buy this or that or give a gift (the “right” gift”, a “good enough” gift, etc.) to people that somehow we’ve failed. Instead of the holidays being a peaceful time of connection it becomes a stressful time focused upon a bunch of external circumstances and spending while our true desires fall by the wayside.

Cutting back on spending often feels like a sacrifice. Much for the same reasons diets don’t work – because it is all about deprivation – if you feel like your approach to money is nothing but sacrifice you’ll fall into the same yo-yo trap. What I can say with certainty is that if you align your spending with your intentions, values, and means, that feeling of sacrifice melts away and is replaced with a feeling of personal power. The power to make choices that honor you. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my family’s favorite holiday traditions is making plates of goodies for our friends and neighbors. We always make cookies, fruit cake, and fudge to include on a plate wrapped in colored cellophane. Then we deliver the goodies on Christmas Eve. In honor of this tradition, I thought I’d share some of these recipes for this week’s Stretch Your Food Dollar.

A report on CNN this week noted that many people are turning to homemade gifts as a way of cutting down on their holiday shopping expenses. The great thing about making homemade gifts in your kitchen is that most of the time, the ingredients are things that you’re likely to already have on hand. Plus, you can get the whole family involved and create your own special memories. Heck, you could even make a cheap date out of decorating cookies and Christmas caroling as you deliver the goodies to your friends. And what’s not to love about a cute date in a Santa hat? The proverbial kiss under the mistletoe is just the icing on the cookie, if you’ll forgive the cheesy pun.

Here’s a recipe for sugar cookies and icing. You can use candy to decorate the cookies, and colored sprinkles are usually less than $1 at the grocery store. Read the rest of this entry »

Due to the recent economi–recession (whew I can finally say it!), I’ve been re-thinking my holiday gift giving. So instead of the usual trinkets picked up at craft fairs, this year I’m committed to only using what I already have, along with things I can buy at the grocery store, for the majority of holiday presents. Can I do it? See below for the full breakdown of what I’m doing, along with my timeline. I’m also including a couple inspirational links for DIY gift giving. Because even though the thought counts, the objects count too!

1. Dried Lavender, Rose and Chamomile Sachets: These tiny bags of fragrant dried herbs can be used for underwear, socks and linens, or even stuffed into particularly smelly shoes. You can buy scraps from your local fabric store at a discount, or you can go even more extreme and use scraps of your old clothes. I have a bunch of dresses with cute patterns that I no longer wear, and I’ll be using these for my sachets. My food co-op in Brooklyn has lavendar, rose buds, and chamomile available for bulk purchase. I’m sure any good local tea store would have the same. In addition to using cute fabric, I’m also going to use a bunch of felt I’ve had lying around forever to monogram the sachets, like this. Who knew that making a monogram was as easy as printing out a font and cutting it? One other idea is to make a heatable neck pad by adding rice and elongating the shape. These are supposed to be especially good for those of us who sit in front of computers all day. Read the rest of this entry »

Does planned spontaneity sound like an oxymoron to you? Well, it isn’t necessarily so. Our lives, especially around the holidays can be so filled to the brim with activities that spontaneity has become a dying art. By spontaneity I don’t mean the chaos created when you fail to plan and launch into crisis mode. I mean a chunk of time and space in which you can choose to do whatever you want or do nothing at all.

Why do you need to plan it? Well, if you’ve ever said the phrase “When I have spare time I will …” and then years later never gotten to do it, you have experienced being steamrolled by your own schedule. I’m here to tell you that spare time and spare money do not just appear magically out of the air. Sure, sometimes you will find a gift of unexpected free time (like when an appointment gets canceled) or extra money (like when a rebate check shows up) but if you are not conscious about how you spend them they vanish as fast as they arrived and you wonder where it went.

In Part I of this series I talked about the power of intentions. Now that you have a sense of some of the things you’d like to do and more importantly how you’d like the holidays to feel, it’s time to take action to bring those intentions to life. This is where the planned spontaneity comes in. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone is tightening their belts this holiday season. One way to stick to a holiday budget is the idea of “group gifting.” Divine Caroline has noticed a recent upswing in this trend:

During times like this, quality can go down simply because many cannot afford the higher-end gifts that they are used to giving. One solution is group gifting. Instead of a few people giving small gifts, that same group combines their resources to buy fewer but more prominent gifts. In the end, the result is usually much more satisfying for everyone involved.

I really like the idea of spreading out the cost of a big gift amongst family members or friends. And honestly, less is more. I’d rather have one gift and have it be a Kitchen Aid mixer, than lots of little gifts that will take up space. Even if your holiday budget is limited, a small amount of money split up amongst friends can really add up. Read the rest of this entry »

When it comes to making the most of the holidays intentions are everything. Intentions are like a compass; they point you in a direction and give you something to refer back to along your journey so you can make sure you know where you are and where you would like to go.  If the two are not aligned you can make adjustments on the spot rather than waiting to find yourself completely lost and unhinged.

From a financial perspective, intentions are like a budget. They are a guidepost meant to free you up, open to possibilities, while staying aligned with your personal integrity.

As you approach this holiday season, are you clear on your intentions for it? Meaning do you have a sense of what your inner desire is in terms of:

• Activities you want to partake in
• People you wish to connect with
• How you want to feel as you participate in holiday activities
• What you choose to spend your money on (and why)
• How much you can spend while staying in financial integrity

While the holidays can be a very busy time, the bottom line is you get to choose what you do (or not do) and how you show up.  Meaning, you are in charge of how you will feel this holiday season: stressed or unstressed, a slave to your money or in control of it, enjoying the season or just putting up with it.  Does that mean you will love every last thing you do this year? Hell no.  If you are in a relationship, work or part of an extended family, you may do things out of love that aren’t first choice on your list, but the people you are doing it for are at the tops of your list.  For example, your idea of fun may not be traveling to some distant state to spend a few days with your partner’s eclectic family.  Yet you love your partner deeply and your relationship is at the top of the list of things that matter most to you.  So, you go.  Even so, you get to choose whether you approach the trip with curiosity and treat it as an adventure (consider it your own live reality show!) or sulk through it and make everyone including yourself feel like you’re taking a trip through purgatory. Read the rest of this entry »