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    Keep the Happy in Your Holidays: 21 Ways to Save Time, Money, and Your Sanity This Christmas Season
    Keep the Happy in Your Holidays: 21 Ways to Save Time, Money, and Your Sanity This Christmas Season
    Keep the Happy in Your Holidays: 21 Ways to Save Time, Money, and Your Sanity This Christmas Season
    Ebook112 pages1 hour

    Keep the Happy in Your Holidays: 21 Ways to Save Time, Money, and Your Sanity This Christmas Season

    By Cherie Lowe

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    About this ebook

    “The most wonderful time of the year”?

    We dream of Christmas as a season of family, celebration, and worship—but too often we get burdened with stress, busyness, yelling, and overspending.

    Cherie Lowe, author of Slaying the Debt Dragon, knows what it’s like to feel frazzled as the holidays draw near. A family of four trying to defeat their debt monster, the Lowe family had to get creative and intentional about keeping the happy in their holidays. These 21 tips—on budgeting, the items you should buy on Black Friday, and much more—will help you save money, time, and your sanity this holiday season. You’ll be able to enjoy the holidays without worry and stress—and celebrate a Christmas filled with wonder and joy. (Includes bonus printables!)
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTyndale House Publishers
    Release dateNov 1, 2014
    ISBN9781496404688
    Keep the Happy in Your Holidays: 21 Ways to Save Time, Money, and Your Sanity This Christmas Season
    Author

    Cherie Lowe

    Cherie Lowe is an expert voice on personal finance, writing from her Queen of Free blog. Her work has been featured in RELEVANT, Christianity Today, Focus on the Family’s Thriving Family, and MOPS International’s Hello Dearest. She is also a columnist for the Daily Journal (Franklin, IN) and appears weekly on WTHR (Indianapolis NBC affiliate). She holds a degree in history from Asbury University. Visit Cherie at queenoffree.net

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    • 5/5
      Keep the Happy in Your Holidays: 21 Ways to Save Time, Money, and Your Sanity This Christmas Season by Cherie LoweStarts with an intro about some things you can do to free up your time for the holiday season. Gift tags are printable, included.Budgeting for many aspects of the holiday are included by section.Good deals and not only on Black Friday. Lots of links and blog postings to help you along.Lots of talk throughout the book about faith and religion and God.Tells you how to save money on car rides, hotels and airline tickets.Other works from the author are highlighted at the end.

    Book preview

    Keep the Happy in Your Holidays - Cherie Lowe

    Introduction

    "I

    T’S THE MOST WONDERFUL

    time of the year! The lyrics and chipper tune blared through the little speaker sitting on my kitchen counter, and I choked back a cynical response of Yeah, right." While I’m far from a Scrooge—I love so many things about the holiday season—I’d found myself once again buried in to-do lists, receipts, recipes, and an overbooked calendar.

    My soul longed for a silent night while my body just yearned for a good night’s sleep—and to wake up on January 2 when it was all over. As I agonized about which task to tackle first, I began to wonder, Why, oh why, do I put our family, our budget, and my personal sanity through the same crazy cycle each and every year? Christmas popped up on my calendar every December 25, and yet the busyness of the season and the extra, unbudgeted expenses somehow always surprised me.

    Maybe you’re a little bit like me. Maybe you long for something different this holiday season—to truly enjoy the miracle and wonder of celebrating the birth of Jesus without the hassle, overspending, and calendar chaos. Maybe you wonder

    how you can keep your traditions intact without turning into a green-eyed, heartless Grinch;

    how you can pass on your love of Christmas to your children without spawning present-grubbing fiends;

    how you can display your appreciation of God’s generous gift of His Son without spending money you don’t have.

    I had to face these questions head-on and completely rethink Christmas when our family launched into a journey of paying off over $127K in debt. (It’s okay to rub your eyes. The number is indeed correct. We both had and then paid off that grand whopping total of debt. Intrigued? I share the full story in my book Slaying the Debt Dragon, along with lessons we learned, practical strategies, and money-saving tips to help families through their own debt-slaying journeys.)

    Everything I had thought was necessary to celebrate Christmas—from the decorations to holiday meals, from Christmas cards to teacher gifts—was placed on the chopping block. I began the soul-searching process of picking through long-held family rituals and cultural expectations to question what was truly necessary and what our family could do without.

    I admit it. At first I threw myself a great big, old-fashioned, four-year-old-style pity party. I thought Christmas would be absolutely no fun without all the extra outings, bells and whistles, and opportunities to bless others with good gifts. Six years later, my heart is filled with gratitude when I think about those early days of sacrifice.

    Of course, it’s probably no surprise to you that each year God extended His great and wonderful loving-kindness to our family, providing in both the miraculous and the mundane. And Christmas? It was still filled with wonder and joy, no matter how much (or little) we spent.

    By following the twenty-one tips in this little book, our family has discovered the freedom of celebrating the arrival of God’s greatest gift without wearing ourselves out or drowning in more debt. I am excited to unpack the lessons I learned by celebrating four holiday seasons on a very tight budget—and the last two with the firm resolve to keep our commitment to stay out of debt. From practical tips like deciding which items you should buy on Black Friday (spoiler alert: if you’re shopping for gifts, you’re probably doing it wrong) and how to save on travel costs to more difficult topics like navigating relationships and determining how much to spend on gifts, I want to help you save money, time, and your sanity this year.

    I know firsthand how easy it is to get carried away with the spirit of the season—overextending our time commitments and dollars. My heart longs for you to realize that you can still celebrate, bless others, and truly enjoy Christmas while spending and doing less. I pray that you gain a little hope through these pages, knowing that Christmas is so much more than gifts and groceries, programs and parties.

    Those who know me well know I am a big fan of all things free. So as an added bonus, I’m excited to include a few of my favorite money-saving resources throughout the book. You can also download a number of free printable versions from www.slayingthedebtdragon.com/happyholidays.

    Tip #1: Make a Debt-Free Christmas Pledge

    I

    LOVE NOTHING MORE

    than sharing a great deal with the people I love and those who follow my blog, Queen of Free. One of my spiritual gifts is bargaining. (I just can’t quite seem to find it in 1 Corinthians 12.) I’m a ninja when it comes to scoring great deals off the clearance rack, slicing prices, and locating free shipping codes. Somehow during the holiday season, my skills are brought to an all-time high. Think of it as Spidey shopping sense on a strongly caffeinated, peppermint- and gingerbread-scented, Christmas-carol-sound-tracked warp drive. In mid-November, I begin to share with my readers some of the best deals I can find on everything from toys to KitchenAids, tablets to stocking stuffers.

    But every year, I experience more than a twinge of guilt and a mite of fear. You see, the last thing I ever want anyone to do is to go into debt, whether during the Christmas season or any other time of the year. I know what the chains of debt feel like—to the tune of over $127K. I’ve been held down by their viselike grip, kept from my purpose in life. I’ve nearly drowned in the overwhelming waves of fear they kicked up. I’ve felt as if I were suffocating in their far-reaching tendrils, which spread into every area of life—my marriage, my parenting, my sense of peace and joy, my relationship with God.

    That’s why each year I plead with my readers to closely guard their hearts, minds, and pocketbooks during the holiday season. On my blog, I post a challenge at the bottom of each deal post, imploring readers to keep their Christmas debt-free.

    My hope is always that readers who swing by my corner of the World Wide Web on a regular basis will gain a little inspiration and encouragement so that

    they might come to love living within their means, delighting in contentment;

    some could learn from our story and avoid our financial mistakes;

    others are perhaps challenged to pay off debt, save money any way possible, and make wise choices;

    they trim the fat from their budgets and run their households well;

    every single person realizes it’s holy to waste nothing;

    we all gain joy from nabbing free stuff; and

    above all else, those who feel they’ve been stupid with money hear me saying, Me too.

    I never want to lead anyone into a state of discontentment or even deeper debt. I beseech you to make the same commitment that I ask of all my readers: Pledge to keep your Christmas debt-free. In fact, I’ve included a printable

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