Merry Christmas!

I hope you all spend some time with those you love today to celebrate Christ's birth.  I pray you will all be touched by this season and find some time to think of those less fortunate as well. 

We are dealing with 8 inches of snow right now.  In Texas.  It has caused some problems for some trying to traveling, but it is beautiful.  It makes me thankful I have a warm home, ample food and clean water, and my family and friends.

We were able to deliver presents to the family we adopted this morning despite the snow and ice.  It was so awesome to see their faces and how thankful they were for a few pieces of clothing and a toys.

Christmas Spending

Well guys, its two weeks before Christmas, and I’m going to be finishing up my shopping this weekend. After our first two years of marriage, Mr. DFx40 and I realized that we needed to prepare a little better for Christmas. So our third year of marriage we started saving $25 a month for Christmas related expenses. We also accumulate $100-$150 in cashback on our credit card every year. That makes our Christmas budget $400-450, but we rarely spend that much. This year we will be buying presents for 32 people this year, and here are a few tips on how we keep our costs down:

Couples Gifts
My brother and his fiancé love movies. More specifically, they love Disney movies. For them we will purchase one or two movies that we know they want. Then we will add popcorn, hot chocolate, or some other edible gift to round it out. This will cost between $20-$30.
Last year we stumbled across some deeply discounted wine in June. We paired these with books, movies, and other edible gifts for the couples we knew would appreciate the wine. Because we had the ability to purchase the wine early, we were able to spend $20-$25 on each couple.

Picture Exchange
My aunt suggested a great idea a few years ago. Every three years when we get together we exchange pictures as our gift. These pictures mean more than a gift because we only get to see them 2 times a year. This year we took our pictures at our local Botanic Gardens, which were free to visit. They also allow amateur photos if you don’t use a tripod. We have a printer that prints good quality photos (most printers do these days) so the only substantial cost here is buying a frame for each family. Because we all knew the arrangement, we were able to look for discounted frames throughout the year.

Draw Names
This is what the adults did on Mr. DFx40’s side of the family when there were 15 people to buy presents for instead of 5. It worked great because everyone bought gifts for the three children, but only one adult gift. This meant we could spend $30-$40 on a good gift (or less, we changed the limit over time) and still save money over buying 15 cheap $5 gifts.

Christmas Gift Exchange Game
We play the Christmas gift exchange game at our office’s Christmas party every year. The limit is $10 so most of the time we purchase edible items and just work it into the food budget. When I was younger we got together with my father’s first cousins (16 people) and played this game. Because of that experience, I can offer some advice. This game might not work with young children who don’t understand why their gift is being “stolen.”

Just Visit
I believe that the reason Thanksgiving is so awesome is because you get together with family, eat, play games, have fun, and don’t have to worry about presents. Sometimes I actually enjoy Thanksgiving more than Christmas because of this. There is nothing wrong with getting together and not giving presents. However, if you’re like my mother and can’t (or won’t?) bear the thought of Christmas with no gifts, consider the next tip.

Adopt a family
We were very blessed this year and we were able to adopt a local family with our bible study group. The family is made up of 9 children ranging from 2 months to 15 years old. The two youngest children live with their mother and the other 7 children live with their grandparents. We were able to purchase each child a pair of jeans, three shirts, pajamas, and stocking stuffers. We also bought each child a bible with his or her name engraved on it, a few family games, and a restaurant gift card and free night of babysitting for the grandparents. There were ten of us to split the costs, so we were able to come up with the money pretty painlessly. This will be the most rewarding and appreciated gift I have ever given.

What about you…how does your family handle gift exchanges? Have you ever gone the non-traditional route and not given presents?

Entitlement

One night a couple of weeks ago I came home from work late and found my husband in his pajamas watching a tv show on the computer. The first thing I noticed about the house was that that it was messier than I left it when I went to work this morning. Then I looked a little closer and noticed that he hadn’t even laid out the load of laundry like I had asked him. So I changed out of my work clothes and walked to the laundry room. As I walked through the kitchen I realized the dishwasher needed to be unloaded and there were dirty dishes from breakfast and lunch in the sink and on the counter. Sigh.

I went into the laundry room, folded the load of laundry and walked through the living room to put it away. He didn’t even look up from the computer. So what did I do in response? I huffed back into the kitchen to clean and start dinner, banging pots and pans around in the process. Halfway through making dinner he had the audacity to walk in and ask me what was wrong.

Oh yeah. I might have forgotten to mention that it was the only day off he had that week. And being the patient man that he is, he responded with a gentle explanation to my tantrum. After a week filled with two 12-hour clinicals, 18 hours of class time, and two 12-hour shifts at work, he was enjoying his only evening off. Oops.

Our sense of entitlement gets us into trouble sometimes. When we feel entitled to have things our way all the time we end up hurting other people and our relationships suffer. A sense of entitlement is what gets many people into debt also. We feel entitled to spend more than we make because we work hard, we don’t get paid enough, or we don’t get recognized for our work. The list goes on and on.

There are very few things that I think humans really need: basic shelter, clothing, food and water. Anything else other than that is a luxury. But think about all the people around the world, including children, who don’t even have all of the things on that short list. It wouldn’t take much for us to scale back on our “necessities” to ensure that others basics needs were met.

What about you…in what ways do you find yourself feeling entitled? Is there anything you previously felt entitled to that you have gone without to help someone else?