Holiday spending…

For some reason I always find it interesting to listen to people talk about how much they spend around the holidays. I am always amazed at the volume of cash that some people spend on Christmas presents. There was a time when we were caught up in being “consumers” and spent far beyond our means at the holidays. It didn’t faze us that we were sometimes very close to needing debt settlement programs the rest of the year. We ignored the reality of our financial situation and simply put presents on our credit cards. This spending was justified by telling ourselves that our family deserved a nice holiday. The reality is that we needed an excuse to give into the desire to buy things we wanted rather than what we actually needed. Earlier this year we payed off a tremendous amount of debt and no longer use credit cards to make any purchases. I cannot tell you how this has shifted our ability to determine what we really need versus what we are being told by the world we deserve to have. The pile under our tree will be significantly smaller this year but that is fine. Each and every gift will have been paid for with cash we have already earned rather than borrowed money.