With the current state of the economy and the Trillions of retirement dollars lost will you change your spending habits this year?
I for one do love the Christmas holiday season, not for religious reasons or the presents I love it because of the time spent with family. My favorite part about the holidays is the food and drink, a nice bottle or two of wine and a massive Turkey dinner is what puts a smile on my face.
For most of us it’s about the kids and the part that always amazes me is how spoiled some children are. We have a 1 year old and many family members are asking me what should we buy her. My response is usually clothes and the response is usually that they want to buy her toys. First off our daughter has so many toys that have been generously passed down to her from friends and family that she doesn’t need any. The second part is like most children her favorite toys are the remotes that run our tv, pots and pans, her parents cell phones and of course any box that a gift comes in.
In the area of saving money for this holiday season and for more to come don’t waste money buying toys for any child under two. Get them some clothes, they grow so darn fast and the great part is the clothes for the most part are very cheap.
I can remember as a child our parents for many years were quite unhappy and in their moment of guilt insisted on buying us a huge amount of presents each year. I can honestly say that even at the tender age of 7 thinking to myself “wow there are a lot of presents, this is going to take while to get through!”
I think many of us have lost the real meaning of the holiday season and that’s being thankful for all we have, being with family and enjoying a good meal. The other aspect is that it’s a holiday, what bothers me are the droves of people that wake up early on boxing day to save a couple of bucks on a new TV. What we do on boxing day is spend time together, go for a walk and if we’re really lucky we take the time to skiing and snowboarding.
So this year while the stock markets have played havoc with our retirement funds, how about spending less money on gifts not because of the stock market but because we already spend way to much at Christmas time.
Focus on family, focus on the food and drink and not on the gifts as the real gift is our family!
This article was written by Shawn Wilson, a member of the customer support team at Datepad, where internet dating is always free. Datepad has a massive directory of informative dating articles along with a great list of dating site reviews on their dating blog.
