Holiday Shopping Has Started
November 30th, 2009 | 483 views | by firefly
Did you start your holiday shopping?
Do you know what to get for everyone?
What about yourself?
This is a happy time of the year. Or at least it should be. Holidays are here, family and friends are getting together. You have more reasons to go shopping.
But is shopping going to be easy this year as it was a year or two ago?
Are we able to afford the same or as much as before?
Things have changed. The prices have gone up, and the money coming in has stayed pretty much the same for most families, if not gone down as well.
I look back at last year, around this time I was ready. I had my holiday shopping done, and everything planed for the holidays. The food menus were set, two parties to be hosted, presents for everyone.
This year it’s completely different. We are thinking to merge two parties into one, or maybe not host any. The shopping is nowhere to be done, not even sure when it will start.
Planing to get a present or two for Princess, and avoid the rest! I’ve done some shopping with Princess for her winter clothes, and it was more like a “we just can’t get that, or that much” than a happy outing.
I don’t remember last time life got this tough. When things seemed so out of reach. Everything looks like it’s so close, yet so far away. The happy season has turned into “Can’t wait to be over”.
So this year my list is just my wish list. And it may stay like that for a while. Hoping next year is going to be better, and things will start returning to normal!
I look forward to the season and all that it brings but I despise the gift giving portion. It’s so incredibly stressful to try to figure out how to pay for things. We don’t charge so it has to be eeked out of the budget somehow.
We do the same (I thought we were the only one) we don’t charge anything, and our budget is so tight, but this year even more than before!
We don’t have a credit card so we too have to budget like crazy to get through Christmas. Thankfully my husband is working steadily, but we have taken a HUGE pay cut not having overtime. Thankfully our boys, like your daughter, are little and to them a little goes a looooong way. We decided since $ is tight NOW is the perfect time to explain to them the true meaning of Christmas, toys are nice, but that’s not all there is.
I know exactly what you mean. The good part here is that Hubby’s job is stable and safe, that we don’t have to worry about that, but again there is never any options for extras. For me to get a job, it would end up costing us more, with commute and daycare. So we are stuck in this situation where things are somewhat steady, yet tough.
As you said good thing our kiddos are young enough to not expect too much, and at the same time old enough to start understanding the meaning over gifts
We’re cutting back this year (minus the puppy my husband insisted on buying my mother in law….). But other than that-among us siblings on my husband’s side we drew a name this year where as other years we just got gifts for everyone. Plus I’m doing a lot of homemade gifts.
Homemade gifts are awesome, I have some cool handmade things I could use. The only problem is most of our family members are not into handmade stuff LOL
I’m happy to report I’m all done! Just stocking stuff to get but for the other I’m done. Love my Black Friday shopping!
Started out lowkey but there were so many amazing deals I went a little over ;(
Oh you are awesome girlie
we didn’t do any shopping on Black Friday 
We have got some small things this week, but nothing big LOL