Advent: Make Your Shopping War Plan

Confession: I despise Christmas shopping. I like winter, I adore shopping, and I love family, so in theory this should be when I thrive. In reality, I'm often left feeling overwhelmed, unappreciated and burnt out. After realizing that I felt this way year after year, I decided that I needed to treat Christmas shopping like the huge undertaking it is by employing some hardcore strategizing.


I keep a spreadsheet in the same format that dates back three years telling me every detail about what I thought of buying and what I budgeted vs. what I actually spent and what I bought. When you have 26 total gift recipients every year you have to be impossibly detailed or the sticker shock alone will kill you! 

My spreadsheet layout for specific recipients: 
Recipient -- Ideas --  Est. Cost  -- Real Cost -- Real Items

And I LOVE that damn spreadsheet. I love being able to see over the past three years that I blow the budget every time on someone, so obviously I should just be honest and increase the estimate. Or I see a great idea that I didn't use and can try for this year. Or I save myself at the last minute from buying a scarf for someone who got one last year. 

Note: every time I do creative homemade wrapping it's a Pinterest-Fail.

I also track the general seasonal spending because I realized that we were spending plenty of other money on the whole Advent experience. It all adds up, and I do a much better job of avoiding those expensive gift tags in the store if I can see at a glance that it would blow my gift wrap budget. 

Category

Cookie Decorating Party

Christmas Cards

Card Postage

Christmas Tree Downstairs

Christmas Decorations

24th Special Brunch as a Couple

Gifts for Each Other

Totals

Hostess Gifts

Gift Wrap

Charity

Bosses

Totals

Keeping tabs on all of this is easy because I do 95% of our family Christmas shopping for my family and both sides of my husband's family. I totally support the argument to make husbands responsible for their side but at the end of the day I care too much about the budget and not repeating gifts to give up control. 

One of my biggest issues is deciding between shopping early and spending the money over time instead of in one big lump, or trying to get all the great sales in November and December. I like the peace of mind that comes from being done early, but at the same time I hate feeling like I could've held out longer for a bargain. In recent years, I've balanced it by snagging truly low cost, great items from July-October and then making a point to shop a few times a week in November and December to hit the regular sales. 

This year I might wrap as a go to watch the pile grow!

Adding to my messy shopping calendar, we move apartments like clockwork every June. I refuse to move gifts from one house to another, so I don't start shopping until I've got a designated storage bin or nook in the new place. That means that I can never take advantage of the famous after Christmas sales when people stock up on wrapping paper and all the trimmings. Sometimes I wish I could, and when I have a home someday I probably will, but ultimately I'm still trying to be semi-minimalist and I can't justify trucking bins of $1 wrapping paper in a U-Haul to a new apartment. 

Goodwill has a Christmas corner year round so I'm always waiting to pounce on decorations for the house, but especially for things like tags or wine charms that I can add to a gift. Those little embellishments that make gifts seem more thoughtful are the main things that I start storing in July once I have my nook going!

Credit Card = these presents toppling backwards to crush your soul .

Oh, and credit cards? Hell no. Seriously. The idea of entering a new year with leftover debt to impress the Joneses over Christmas makes me feel physically ill. Nothing is worth the spiraling black hole of credit card debt. Set a budget and stay in it. If people aren't happy with your gifts, and you've done the best you can to be thoughtful and kind within your financial limits then they have other much more fundamental problems than Christmas gifts! 

And there's your look at my tracking system and shopping calendar that no one asked for! What about you? Do you save it all for the last minute or are you one of those smug people done by Halloween?